BP3_2010011_Web 2.0 T1 - Kublax

After looking at various Web 2.0 sites and exploring the various tools therein, I decided to look deeper into Kublax.com and their budgeting tool. When I taught Economics to high school seniors I would always do a budget project as one of the last assignments for the semester. I wanted to give my seniors an idea of what it would be like to live on their own. I made them find a place to live, made them pay for everything including sewer/water, cell phone, groceries, and other various bills a typical person would have in any given month. Then I would show them how to use Microsoft Excel to create a spreadsheet that included their income, bills, money left over (if any) and so forth. One of the problems with this however was that the graphs were a little two involved for this project that only lasted a couple of days.

The budgeting tool on Kublax would solve that problem and break their spending down even further. The website was easy to use and I loved how each month was displayed as a pie chart. Then you could just click on each piece of the pie and it would give a detailed breakdown of all the spending that occurred within the designated area. If you wanted gas for your car as one of your areas, then you could see how much you spent, when you filled up, and what portion of your spending it encompassed. This would have been a great tool to use for the final portion of the project so that they could see just how easy it is to spend your entire income on bills.

I am going to use it this for the McSherry budget starting in February to see if it will help with cutting costs on certain areas. It will also allow me to see our income now that I am starting a new job, get paid on the 15th and 30th and have a different pay rate.