I use fractions everyday. When I see a 60% off sale I know that I can just multiply the original price by 4 and then divide by 10 to get the sale price. (10/10 - 6/10 = 4/10)
When I need to make a recipe for my wife and myself that was orignally designed for six peolpe I can just divide the quantity of all the ingredients by three.
Higher order polynomial fractions are important to learn if you're going to do calculus or differential equations (and probably beyond) as they help introduce the idea that polynomials can be pulled apart and simplified.