If you spent $250 for a pressure washer that saves you $50 a year in rental costs, how long would it take to recover your investment using simple payback?

To determine how long it would take to recover the investment in the pressure washer using the concept of simple payback, you need to calculate how many years it will take for the annual savings to equal the initial cost.

In this case, you spent $250 on the pressure washer, and it saves you $50 each year in rental costs. The payback period is calculated by dividing the initial investment by the annual savings:

Payback period = Initial Investment / Annual Savings

Plugging in the numbers gives:

Payback period = $250 / $50 = 5 years

This means it will take 5 years to recover your initial investment through the savings generated by not having to rent a pressure washer. Therefore, this calculation confirms that option B is the appropriate answer, as it accurately reflects the time required for the investment to pay for itself based on the annual savings.