I don’t want to argue against the correctness of the sentence in English (I think you’re correct with that). I’m just uncomfortable by the conflation of two meanings. This makes:

“He spent his last penny” technically the same as “He is worth nothing”

So a rich person is “worthy”, which also means they are good, have achieved good things, and we are happy they exist. A poor person is “unworthy” and we can throw them away like garbage. That conflation is a problem to me.