Enabling Adult Adolescents: Does Your 30-Year-Old Need an Allowance?

In this episode of Wake Up, Look Up, Pastor Zach tackles the growing trend of parents financially supporting their adult children well into their 30s. He explains how enabling dependency delays maturity and undermines God’s design for work, responsibility, and growth. Instead of allowances for adults, Pastor Zach calls parents to raise children who are resourceful, responsible, and prepared to stand on their own before God.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Zach Weihrauch

Follower of Jesus who has graciously given me a wife to love, children to shepherd, and a church to pastor.

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Check out new episodes of our daily podcast, Wake Up, Look Up, with Zach Weihrauch as he interprets what's happening in our world through the lens of the gospel.

Hello everyone, thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're talking about enabling adult adolescence and we're asking the question, does your 30 year old need an allowance? This is prompted by a crazy article I read in the Wall Street Journal recently that was focusing on one particular couple as part of a trend who is currently saving $1,000 a month, not for colleges, not for emergencies, but to fund their daughter's adult life after she turns 30. Their goal is that when she turns 30, they want to provide her with a $3,000 a month allowance for the rest of her life. Now, the reason, they say, is because they want her to have options. They want her to be able to pursue whatever she wants to pursue in life independent of money. And this is a growing trend. In fact, a recent Pew study found that 60% of parents, 6 out of 10 parents with children ages 18 to 34, financially support their kids regularly, including money for rent, groceries, debt payments, and even vacation. Listen, inflation adjusted incomes are 18% higher than in 1980. Housing is up 400%. Childcare and tuition costs are up over 1,000%. And that's resulting in parents saying, hey, we need to provide for our children because times are harder for them than they were for us. In fact, some parents feel as though this is a moral obligation, that, uh, because the economy is out of control, it falls to parents to make sure that they are providing for their children. So how should we think about this? Well, I can tell you this. We should think about this in the proper way. And that is that this is, um, absurd. I mean, let me just say this. No one is arguing that when a person finds themselves in a difficult place, we don't help them. The Bible makes clear that we're to be sacrificial and generous in all kinds of ways. And I don't care if the person in your small group who says they can't pay their light bill is your daughter or your son or your neighbor or a stranger. If you're in a position to help, you should consider it. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about assistance when times are hard. We're talking about enabling a generation to depend upon their parents instead of themselves. We're talking about a cultural trend to delay maturity instead of pushing people to maturity. Like, just think about this. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, When I was a child, I thought as a child, but now that I'm a man, I put childish ways behind me. An allowance is a childish thing. It's a way of teaching kids about money. It's a way of teaching kids about hard work, of, uh, teaching them how to manage their money, that every dollar that goes somewhere is a dollar that can't go somewhere else. Your 30 year old should have learned that lesson by now. And, uh, by the way, you hear what their parents are paying for debt payments. So, hey, son or daughter, I know your materialism is out of control and you lack the ability to say no to yourself. So instead of you learning how to dig your way out of that, I will further enable or empower you. Vacation. Hey, here's a simple rule of life. If you don't have the money for a vacation, don't take one. You don't ask mom and dad. Listen, this is how you learn financial management. A little pain, a little difficulty is what shapes you. And that is the biblical point. Work, uh, is part of God's design, whether that's professionally or internally. The work I do on myself, to not be materialistic, to not be bad with money. Second, Thessalonians 3 says it this way, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. That's because it's not sustainable. Lazy people, irresponsible people, will consistently find themselves back at the low point asking for more help. When you help someone out of laziness, when you help someone out of irresponsibility, you're not actually helping them. If the goal is to help them, it's to lead them to sustainably take care of themselves and to provide for their families. That's why Proverbs 22:6 says to train up a child in the way he should go. Listen, if your child is 30 expecting an allowance when they were 3, you messed up. And which is why, if you're raising someone who's in your home now, do the work now of teaching them about money. Do the work now of teaching them about responsibility. Because as Galatians 6 reminds us, you reap what you sow. Enabling parents have been enabling parents long before a child is 30. And by the way, I don't even like saying when a child is 30, because when you're 30, you're not a child anymore, you're an adult. You should be taking care of yourself. Letting children grow up is a part of the biblical picture. Romans 14:12 reminds us that each of us will give an account before God. And when that day comes empowering, enabling helicopter parent. You won't get to be there. You don't get to speak for your child before God. So they better learn how to speak for themselves, how to stand on their, uh, own two feet. If your child is looking to anyone for help, by the way, it should be God. That's why Jesus says and the Lord's Prayer that we should pray in Matthew 6 that God would give us that day our daily bread. It isn't that we should be stopping a prayer to call mom and see if she can doordash. What are we doing? Listen, in the church, we have got to be raising responsible, resourceful children who understand the value of work, the value of money, the value of responsibility so that they can become the men and women of God they are called to be. If you're an enabler, you're not helping. And if you want to help, you need to stop. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at [e-mail]!