I'm actually surprised how low the threshold is... 13500€ isn't too much.
At around 2500 USD / month for up to 2 years, it's a pretty decent deal for average Joe. I think I pay around 800 USD / year for unemployment insurance.
In practice, I'll probably never need it though.. so I have considered dropping it.
The advice i've heard for France is to have roughly 3 months, preferably in a liquid savings account which even has some interest (0.25% atm, so not much).