variables help in real world situations like saving and budgeting. for example, if you wanted to remodel an empty room into a home theater and make $1,200 a month and $950 goes into expenses then how many months would it take you to save up $3,000 for the remodel? The months would be the variable in this situation and an equation would look something like this. 250x=3000 then you would solve for x. the way you use properties of real numbers in algebraic expressions is how you would use things like the distributive property like x(1+1)=2x because x+x = 2x.
