Pausing a reserve temporarily

Pause is for the case where a reserve is fine where it is and shouldn't grow further for now. The classic example is Lifestyle: you front-loaded it earlier in the year, it's now well above floor, and you'd rather route the next few months of allocation to Growth instead of letting Lifestyle keep climbing. Pause does that without forcing you to set a misleading floor or delete and recreate the tier.

What pause does and doesn't do

Paused: the reserve is skipped during allocation. Income walks past it as if it were already at floor.

Not paused:

• The balance — your money stays exactly where it is.
• Manual deposits or transfers — you can still move dollars in or out by hand.
• Manual draws — paused reserves can still cover real spend if you choose to draw.
• History — every prior deposit, allocation, and draw stays linked to the reserve.
• Reporting — paused reserves still show up on charts and exports, with a "Paused" tag.

In short: pause stops new automatic flow in, nothing else.

When to pause

• Goal-funded reserve. You've hit your savings target for a specific outcome (vacation, equipment, conference). Don't keep over-funding while you decide what's next.
• Seasonal cycle. A side line of business is dormant for the winter and Business Ops doesn't need to grow until you re-launch.
• Restructuring window. You're moving balance from one reserve to another and want to freeze the destination tier's allocation while you migrate.
• Cashflow stress test. You want to see how the system behaves with one fewer active tier, without committing to a permanent reorder (which isn't supported anyway).

When NOT to pause

• Survival. Don't. Survival is the baseline that keeps the system honest. If Survival is over-funded, lower the floor instead — see Adjusting reserve targets.
• Tax. Don't. Tax accrues against income, not against a goal. Pausing Tax means dollars that should be set aside aren't. The right tool is the rolling tax rate in Settings → Tax.
• Long-term pause for an active tier. If a reserve has been paused for 90+ days, you probably want to lower its floor or restructure, not keep pausing.

How to pause and resume

1. Open Settings → Reserves.
2. Click the reserve you want to pause.
3. Toggle Pause allocation on. Optional: set an auto-resume date (e.g., 30 days, end of quarter).
4. Click Save. The reserve is tagged "Paused" on the dashboard immediately.

To resume, return to the reserve and toggle the same control off. If you set an auto-resume date, ReservWise will resume automatically and surface a one-line confirmation card on the next dashboard load.

What happens to allocation while paused

The walk through priority order skips the paused reserve entirely. Money that would have gone into it flows to the next tier. If every tier above the bottom is paused (don't do this), the money pools in the lowest active tier — typically Wealth Building — and your surplus rules apply.

Sub-reserves under a paused parent are also paused. You can pause an individual sub-reserve while leaving its siblings active.

What to do next

• Pause one over-funded tier for 30 days and watch where the redirected dollars land. It's the fastest way to feel how priority order actually moves money.
• If you're considering pausing Survival or Tax, read Adjusting reserve targets instead.
• If you're pausing because the reserve no longer fits your business, see Renaming or restructuring reserves.

Pause is the gentle option. Lower the floor for a permanent change. Restructure for a real one.