Your Pell Grant just hit, find out everything you can do with it... Tonight!
Wage Gauge splits scholarships, grants, aid refunds, and any lump sum into tuition, bills, food, and what's actually safe to spend. Regular shifts tick in live so the rest of the month does not go dark.
If this is your semester
Pay hits Friday, rent is Sunday.
Tips don't match the schedule app.
Pell / scholarship hits and suddenly everything is "affordable."
Aid refund looks huge until books, the meal plan, and a weekend eat it.
You keep guessing and then Venmo-request yourself into a hole.
Wage Gauge is the place you open instead of treating a grant like a shopping spree.
Lump sums without the crash.
Grants, scholarships, aid refunds, tax refunds, and summer payouts arrive as one number. Your life is not one number. The allocator splits the deposit the day it lands.
Name the source
Pell, scholarship, work-study refund, bonus, tax refund, other.
Assign must-pays first
Tuition balance, rent, books, phone, existing bills, loan slice.
Set a food / transit float
For the weeks until the next check or next disbursement.
Park a savings slice
If you want one — even $50 counts.
Whatever remains is safe-to-spend
That tag is what you live on. The rest is already spoken for.
Works for any lump: Pell, state grant, private scholarship, housing credit, tax refund, internship signing bonus, one fat summer paycheck.
Recurring aid calendars: if disbursements come in August / January / whenever, preset the split so you are not reinventing it at 1 a.m.
Does not require a bank link. Type the amount. Split it. Done.
After the split, the dashboard treats allocated money as claimed — so "balance" and "safe to spend" stop being the same lie.
How it works
Add the job
Hourly, salary, gig, campus, internship — and any aid sources.
Log shifts, tips, overtime, days off
Or let the calendar hold it.
When a lump lands, run the allocator
Bills, loans, and aid buckets get filled first.
Read one number
Safe to spend until the next check or next disbursement.
Core tracking and lump-sum splitting stay usable without paying. You can stay manual forever.
Features
Live earnings
See the shift pay itself while you're still on the clock.
Lump sum allocator
Pell, scholarships, refunds, bonuses — split on arrival.
Safe-to-spend
The only number that matters on a Thursday night.
Bills + pay links (Pro)
One tap jumps you to your bank or card site so the Wi-Fi bill gets paid before exam week eats your brain.
Aid & loans
Treat refunds and disbursements as money with a job, not surprise cash.
Surplus → future (Premium)
Leftover after the allocation can go to savings, stocks, crypto, gold — marked when you actually move it.
Widgets + dark mode
Check the number without opening a maze.
Built for your kind of money
Whatever shape your pay comes in, Wage Gauge shows what's claimed and what's yours.
Pell / scholarship refund
$3,200 hits → Tuition $1,400 · Rent $800 · Books $250 · Bills $180 · Safe to spend $570. The allocator does the math before DoorDash does.
Campus job
Dining-hall shifts and work-study hours tick in live. You see the week add up even when the schedule app lags.
Delivery / gig + tips
Trips and tips logged per shift. Overtime and double-time counted so Friday you is not surprised.
Internship
Salary or stipend split across the months it has to last. Mark a signing bonus as a lump and allocate it once.
Work-study + aid
Small checks plus big disbursements in one view. The refund is claimed the day it lands; the shift pay stays liquid.
Summer lump paycheck
One fat summer check treated like a grant: rent, gas, a food float, a savings slice, then what's safe to spend.
"I stopped treating my Pell refund like a shopping spree."
"Scholarship hit Friday. Rent and books were already claimed before I opened DoorDash."
"Tips used to vanish. Now I see them before I spend them."
"It's the anti-spreadsheet."
Early product. Built for students who get one big deposit and a hundred small decisions.
Pricing
Start free the week the grant hits. Upgrade when the paycheck gets more complicated, not on day one.
Free
Track everything, pay nothing
- Real-time wage tracking
- Jobs, shifts, tips, overtime
- Bills
- Lump-sum allocator
- Simple budgets
- Projections
- Dark mode
- Widgets
- Bill-ready alerts — push & email when you've earned enough to pay
Pro
Bill pay links & balance tracking
Charge every bill to your card to stack rewards & keep cash longer, then pay the card from your bank on payday.
- Everything in Free
- Track your bank balance — enter & update it manually (no Plaid)
- Track credit cards to manage rewards & spending
- P2P Payment Apps — Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, PayPal & 20+ more
- One-tap links take you to your bank or card site to pay
- Email notification when a bill is ready to pay
- Audible chime alert when earnings hit a bill threshold
Premium
Best valuePut your surplus to work
- Everything in Free
- Surplus calculator — see exactly what's left after all bills
- Investment tracker — links to your favorite investing tools for Crypto, Stocks, Gold & Silver
- Mark investments as done to track what you've actually deployed
- Budget Overview — full income vs. expense breakdown by category
- Savings allocator — set aside a portion of your surplus for savings
- Track your savings account balance — enter & update it manually (no Plaid)
FAQ
Allocate the grant. Then live on what's left on purpose.
Two minutes to add a job or a refund. Then you always know what's safe.
Enter the haven — open Wage Gauge