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In Catalan there is an expression "ser la xocolata del lloro" that can be translated as "saving by not giving chocolate to the parrot is futile", conveying the meaning that when a household wants to save money, there are ways by which not much saving is going to be made. As an example, if you stop giving little bits of chocolate to the parrot to enjoy, although it looks like a saving measure, it's more posturing than real savings, so that doesn't make much difference: you actually won't end up saving much, because the amount of chocolate is very small.

Is there any equivalent expression in the English language for the same kind of saving efforts that won't make a difference?

RegDwigнt
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719016
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9 Answers9

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The term penny-wise refers to being "careful in dealing with small sums of money or small matters". It's commonly found in the phrase penny wise, pound foolish, meaning "Someone who is penny wise, pound foolish can be very careful or mean with small amounts of money, yet wasteful and extravagant with large sums."

You may also find the term bikeshedding of interest:

The word ... implies technical disputes over minor, marginal issues conducted while more serious ones are being overlooked. The implied image is of people arguing over what color to paint the bicycle shed while the house is not finished.

The term cheeseparing economy refers to "a useless economy." According to ngrams for cheeseparing economy it is occasionally but not frequently used. The phrase "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel", from Matthew 23:23, means "to fuss about trifles while ignoring more serious matters" (per reference.com) or "to criticize other people for minor offenses while ignoring major offenses" (per thefreedictionary.com). For related phrases, also see questions #41508 and #39726.

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James Waldby - jwpat7
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    If you want examples of fussing at trifles while ignoring crises, there are also the phrases "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" and "fiddling while Rome burns." I guess I thought the OP wanted things related to personal finances. – JLG Mar 31 '12 at 22:38
  • @JLG, yes, those are mentioned in answers to questions #41508 and #39726 referenced in my answer above. For some reason "pissing into the wind" isn't mentioned in those questions, where it would fit right in. Re personal finances, some non-idiomatic terms are improvident, ill judged, and the curious word misthrive, "to thrive poorly; to be not thrifty or prosperous". – James Waldby - jwpat7 Mar 31 '12 at 23:03
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    bikeshedding is a term confined to a small community of BSD Unix developers. "Arguing over what color to paint the bicycle shed" is not an idiom that is widely used in any sizeable English-speaking culture and so it is of little relevance. – Kaz Mar 31 '12 at 23:34
  • @Kaz, a comment after a question #41508 answer somewhat similarly calls bikeshedding "a bit domain-specific", and apparently the term is fairly new (1999) and has only a million Google hits, but I think you're mistaken about extent and frequency of use. See eg rikkikite article. – James Waldby - jwpat7 Mar 31 '12 at 23:49
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    @jwpat7 You forgot to put bikeshedding in quotes. That reduces Google's figure to 29,000. Without the quotes, it looks for "bikeshed" and "bike shed". With the quotes, most of the hits are computer geek blogs and discussions. And of course, reams of scraped pages (automatically generated scraped content) that is typical of Google results these days. – Kaz Apr 01 '12 at 00:08
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    People have probably quibbled over irrelevant details and matters since the dawn of humanity; so this bikeshedding term does not name anything that is even remotely new. I doubt it will catch on. For one thing, it is not colorful enough. Unlike something like, say, wrangle for an ass's shadow. And that failed to catch on. pettifog doesn't appear to be in wide use either. I suspect that "nitpicking" will continue to be the "go to" word for this area of meaning. – Kaz Apr 01 '12 at 00:17
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    "Penny wise and pound foolish" was what I thought of first when I read this question. – Kit Z. Fox Apr 01 '12 at 01:11
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    I find it humorous that we started quibbling about bikeshedding. Good example of bikeshedding. :^) I say we paint it blue. – J.R. Apr 01 '12 at 01:17
  • @Kaz actually the term has a much longer history bikeshedding and broader use than your personal experience. –  Apr 02 '12 at 13:24
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One idiomatic way to refer to a measure that doesn't make much difference would be a drop in the bucket or a drop in the ocean.

drop in the bucket

(idiomatic) An effort or action having very little overall influence, especially as compared to a huge problem.

A $100 donation from an individual is generous, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the $100,000 fundraising goal.

RegDwigнt
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    This answer is much closer to the literal meaning of the translation of the parrot phrase than "penny wise, pound foolish". There is nothing whatsoever in the question to indicate that the household is wasting money, only that one particular money-saving measure is not terribly effective. Maybe the Catalan expression was meant to convey pound foolishness, but its literal English translation certainly doesn't. – John Y Apr 02 '12 at 13:54
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I don't know how widespread it is, but in my experience the phrase "counting paper clips" is something like this.

It refers to trying to bring a company's finances under control by accounting for every bit of stationery: this is usually both time-consuming and ineffective.

Colin Fine
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    This is a nice answer. I like that it only obliquely implies the company might be wasteful in the larger scheme of things. Combine this with @Jim's answer and we get "bean counters"! :) – John Y Apr 02 '12 at 14:06
  • This is very much the same in a company's finances than the parrot's chocolate is to household finances. Good one! – 719016 Apr 09 '12 at 09:06
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I've heard it as being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It means being thrifty with small sums and foolish with large sums. We use it in the U.S., even though we use dollars.

JLG
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As RegDwight says, drop in the bucket (American), and drop in the ocean (British) are commonly used, but they both often carry the implication that some minor "positive" contribution will have no detectable effect on the overall situation.

It's declined a bit from its heyday around WW2, but don't spoil the ship for a hap'orth of tar is a well-established adage more specifically focussed on the downside of excessive scrimping.

A hap'orth there is a half-penny's worth, and the tar is used in the final caulking process to make the hull completely waterproof before the newly-built vessel is lowered from dry dock into water. Making a small saving there would indeed be a mistake if your boat sank on its maiden voyage!

FumbleFingers
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There is an expression

won't amount to a hill of beans

(sometimes also phrased as won't add up to a hill of beans)

Since beans are so inexpensive, even a hill of them won't be worth much.

As an example:

All our efforts won't amount to a hill of beans if we can't get that valve closed.

Jim
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Not in exactly the same vein but "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" also speaks to worrying about detail that won't make a difference to the looming disaster.

dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
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Slightly vulgar, but pissing in the ocean is a metaphor for an action that won't make much of a difference. This may specifically be an Australianism.

Robert Atkins
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  • One of Neil Gaiman's books has a character saying, " 'Every little helps', as the old woman said, pissing in the sea. " It's described as being an old English saying, although I hadn't heard of it before reading the book. –  Apr 01 '12 at 07:43
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    @MarkBannister that odd phrasing of it ("every little helps" as opposed to "every little bit helps") is a supermarket slogan. Tesco's I think. – Kate Gregory May 01 '12 at 12:34
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    @KateGregory: If I could remember which book it was in, I would go and look up the exact phrase. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=every+little+helps&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=6&smoothing=3 appears to show much wider use for "every little helps" than the equivalent search for "every little bit helps". –  May 01 '12 at 14:03
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Apart from the obvious false economy have you considered robbing Peter to pay Paul?

OldCurmudgeon
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