Maths word problem help please.

[LucyTrainsDragons]

Sorry, hold my hands up, I’m rubbish at maths.

Could you please help with the following:-

Frankie buys some stamps.
She spends £10.80 on 20p and 50p stamps.
She buys twice as many 20p stamps as 50p stamps.
How many 20p stamps did she buy?

Oh to be a mathematician! I just did a rough guess 10 x 50p and 20 x 20p (£9 total) then adjusted it slightly so 12 x 50p and 24 x 20p (£10.80)

@Villanemme thank you! It makes so much more sense now. I hate word problems, always gets jumbled up and I overthink!

The 'official' way to do it is to create two equations based on the info in the question.

Let x = no. of 20p stamps and y = no. of 50p stamps.
We know that x = 2y and 20x + 50y = 1080.
Then replace the 20x in the second equation with 40y so 90y = 1080.
Which gives y = 12 and x = 24.

Does this help? They need to set it out as an equation.

Thank you @Angelonia and @PatriciaHolm that really helps.

You both make it sound so easy. It's knowing what you're trying to achieve and how to manipulate x and y I suppose.