Hi! I saw your post on the looking for thread:
First, welcome to tbt! I hope you enjoy it here as much as I do c: If you ever need anything, you can always leave me a VM and I'll try to answer it ASAP~
Second, when people say 30 tbt, they literally mean 30 tbt. It is fairly easy to earn tbt, and you can trade them in for in-game bells (every 1 TBT is equal to 200k IGB).
I hope that clears things up!