Dollars and Cents

One hundred cents make one dollar. That is the same hundred you already know.

Two symbols

Small amounts use ¢, like 45¢. A dollar or more uses $, like $1.25.

Four quarters

4 quarters is 100¢, which is $1. So is 10 dimes, and so is 100 pennies.

A dollar is a hundred cents

One hundred cents make one dollar, the same bundling rule you learned for hundreds. Four quarters, ten dimes, twenty nickels, or a hundred pennies all make exactly one dollar. Different coins, same value.

Reading the dollar sign and the point

In $3.45 the 3 is dollars and the 45 is cents. The point separates them. So $3.45 is 3 whole dollars and 45 cents — three hundreds and forty-five, if you think of everything in cents. Money is place value wearing different clothes.

The dropped zero

Writing $2.5 when you mean two dollars and five cents is wrong — it reads as two dollars fifty. The cents part always takes two digits: $2.05. This is a mistake adults make too, and it is worth being careful about from the start.