That might be today's perspective, but if you take a look at seniors paying for groceries you'll sometimes see grannies with a few hundred on them. Anecdotally, I work with a 50-something who told me that when he was in his late twenties in a high-ish role where in he had to sometimes corral wilder co-workers he as a rule carried a couple thousand on him. That's something like $5000 today. He thought it was a lot, but not crazy.