Fred is 4 years older than Barney. Five years ago the sum of their ages was 48. How old are they now?

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Answer 1 · 2018-04-08T01:41:03

Fred is $31$ years old

Barney is $27$ years old

Let Fred's age be denoted as $F$ , and Barney's as $B$ .

Then, $F = B + 4$ (in years).

Five years ago, the sum of their ages was $48$ :

$Rightarrow F + B = 48$

$Rightarrow (B + 4) + B = 48$

$Rightarrow 2B = 44$

$therefore B = 22$

So, five years ago Barney was $22$ years old.

Let's find out how old Fred was five years ago:

$Rightarrow F = B + 4 = 22 + 4 = 26$

Fred was $26$ years old, five years ago.

Therefore, Fred is now $26 + 5 = 31$ years old and Barney is $22 + 5 = 27$ years old.