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You want to buy something that costs $120, and it's on sale for 20% off. What is the item's sale price?

First, convert the 20% to a real mathematical number. For percents, this is always done by dividing the 20% by 100%, or 20% / 100% = 0.200.

Second, find out what 20% of $120 is. This is the amount of the sale discount. This is always found by mulitplying 0.200 by the item's cost $120, like this:

0.200 x $120 = $24.00.

So for this sale, you'll save $24.00 on this item.

This means, the cost of the item to you is

$120 - $24.00 = $96.00.

Alternatively, you can think about it this way. The item is 20% off. This means you'll pay 80.000% of the total cost (100% - 20% = 80.000%).

Now what's 80.000% of the total cost?

0.800 x $120 = $96.00.

Just like the result above, the sale price on the item is $96.00.