How to pause an allowance temporarily

Sometimes life gets in the way — school holidays, a family trip to Mombasa, or a month where you’d rather your child earn rather than receive. Pausing an allowance lets you stop the payment cycle without losing the schedule you’ve already set up. No need to delete and recreate everything from scratch.

This is different from deleting an allowance. When you pause, the underlying structure — frequency, amount, linked wallet — stays intact. You’re just telling KiddyCash to skip the next disbursement cycle (or several) until you’re ready to resume.

Before you pause

Make sure you know which allowance you’re working with. If you have multiple children or multiple allowance types set up, navigate directly to the specific allowance using its management link:

https://kiddy.cash/family/kiddy/account/allowance/:allowance_id

Replace :allowance_id with the actual ID shown in your allowance settings. You’ll find this in the URL when you open any allowance from your family dashboard.

Steps to pause an allowance

  1. Open your family dashboard and select the child whose allowance you want to pause.

  2. Go to the Allowances tab on their profile. You’ll see all active allowances listed — weekly, monthly, or custom schedules.

  3. Select the allowance you want to pause. This opens the allowance detail view, where you can see the next scheduled payment date, amount in KES, and the linked wallet.

  4. Tap or click “Manage allowance” to enter edit mode.

  5. Toggle the “Active” switch to off. This immediately pauses the allowance. The next scheduled disbursement will not process. The allowance record itself is preserved — frequency, start date, and all settings remain untouched.

  6. Confirm the pause when prompted. KiddyCash will show you the date the allowance was last paid out, so you have a reference point when you come back to resume.

  7. To resume, return to the same screen and toggle “Active” back on. The allowance will resume on the next scheduled cycle based on the original frequency — it does not back-pay missed cycles.

What pausing does (and doesn’t) do

Pausing is a clean hold. It does not:

  • Delete the allowance or its history
  • Affect your child’s existing wallet balance
  • Reset the payment schedule or start date
  • Trigger any notification to your child by default

It does:

  • Prevent the next automatic disbursement from processing
  • Keep the allowance visible in your dashboard as “Paused”
  • Allow you to resume at any point without reconfiguring anything

If you originally set up a weekly allowance or a monthly allowance, the cadence is preserved exactly as configured. You don’t lose your setup — you just interrupt it temporarily.

When pausing makes more sense than deleting

If you’re stepping back from automatic payments because you want your child to be more active in earning — perhaps through chores or school-based savings goals — pausing gives you breathing room. Families thinking about this shift often find it useful to explore how schools and families can collaborate on financial education, particularly as more Kenyan schools introduce structured money management programmes. There’s also a broader conversation worth having around why schools play a bigger role in financial literacy than most parents realise — pausing an allowance can be a deliberate, educational moment rather than just an administrative one.