Total cost of a $56.53 meal after including a 17% tip?

What you do is just multiply $56.53 by 1.17. That represents 117% (100% for the meal and 17% for the tip).
Hope that helps! You should get $66.1401, but since you cant have a hundredth of a penny, its just $66.14. :)

What you're going to do is find 1% of what you paid for:

This is done by moving the decimal place to the left two, or dividing the number by 100.

56.53/100
0.5653

You will then get:
0.5653

That is how much 1% of your meal costs, but we're looking for 17%. So to get 17% we will mutiply that by 17.

.5653 * 17 = 9.62

Now, this number is how much the TIP only will be. Next step is to add this to the number of how much your initial meal costed.

56.53 + 9.62 = $66. 15

Total cost = $66.15