When looking at expenses and debt, as the Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors has been doing during the current budget process, it’s easy to miss the smaller things that will, when taken in total, make a difference.

A recent patron of an Ocean Pines lunch spot, for instance, noticed that the liquor bottles at the bar did not have measured-pour spouts on that particular day. It’s a small thing and it makes for a good stiff drink, but it also cuts deeply into whatever profit that drink might generate.

As has been said many times, a penny saved is not a penny earned, it’s a penny on the bottom line at full value. Although increased revenue is always the objective, tweaking expenses here and there can turn a decent bottom line into a good one.

The directors and association General Manager John Bailey understand that, but many other people might not realize the benefits of penny-pinching where it counts. If, for instance, an organization is running a 9 percent profit margin, a penny saved is 11 percent better than a dollar in sales.

On the revenue side, a company would have to increase its price from $1 to $1.11 to produce the same amount of profit.

Obviously, Ocean Pines can’t save its way out of its deficit without reducing the services that residents depend on and enjoy, hence the increase in assessments.

Still, as Bailey, department heads and the directors put the association back on a better business footing, they will get around to finding the smaller changes that could, in aggregate, improve the situation substantially.