If he had 10^4 thousand dollars I assume he wouldn't have to worry about whether to pay off his student loans or not. Unless he had a lot of student loans.
I assume it means what it says. Tens of thousands of dollars in the bank. Nice to have, but far from FU.
I got laid off in the dot com crash with a 10^5 dollars in 2001 (I know, I got lucky. Company out of money, but acquired by a bigcorp. Laid off the least senior folk with nice package).
It let me move across the country and not work for a couple years. Which was nice, and really it's ultimately been life changing what with a new environment, but it wasn't transformational or anything.
