The money-news site The Billfold recently ran an interview with an anonymous physician who earns $570,000 a year and says, “I know that technically I am in the 1%, but I don’t feel rich at all.” He went on to explain how he owns a home worth nearly $1 million, three cars, a couple of investment properties, and a chunk of a profitable healthcare company yet still frets that he doesn’t have enough. “I don’t feel secure,” he said. “Before I had a job, the six-figure mark was a goal for everyone. And now I’ve hit the half-million dollar mark. I don’t know if I’d feel rich if I ever met the seven-figure mark.”

Commenters howled, of course, deriding the discontented doc’s self-indulgence and making many predictable observations about materialism run amok. “It’s emblematic of the insane level of lifestyle creep that allows someone who makes $500k+ a year to feel not rich,” wrote one reader, reflecting the sentiment of many others.

The anonymous doc, whom the site dubbed “Jake Smith,” acknowledged his own materialistic impulses. “There is a palpable pressure to keep up with the Joneses,” he said of the social demands in his affluent community, which is in the suburbs of a sizeable eastern city, according to Logan Sachon of The Billfold. Yet he also showed a degree of restraint, making do, for instance, with a 7-year-old Lexus when many of his neighbors drive brand-new Range Rovers. That doesn’t exactly generate sympathy but it shows more self-awareness than the wealthy — or caricatures of the wealthy — are typically known for.

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Rather than attacking Smith’s sense of entitlement, it might be worth reconsidering what it means to be rich in the first place. A lot of wannabe millionaires fantasize about a life in which they never have to worry about money at all. But that may be the very thing that leads to the gaudy behavior we find most appalling about the rich. A healthy dose of worry might help the wealthy remember how the other half lives, and even spend their money more like the 99 percent.