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Idiom for saying something doesn't cost a lot for someone rich?
1 million is basically short change for Goldman Sachs.
I thought the expression was short change, but after searching on Google, it seems that's not quite the right expression? Another alternative is saying "1 million is peanuts for him/her", but is there a phrase or idiom that ends with "change"?
You might be thinking of chump change, defined by Wiktionary as:
(chiefly US, idiomatic) A sum of money considered to be insignificant.
He spent $300,000 for his new car, but that's chump change for a billionaire like him.
He spent $300,000 for his new car, but that's peanuts for a billionaire like him. (Maybe it's not just us
Jul 15, 2022 at 8:27
a small or unimportant amount of money
A rich good guy who could buy and sell drug lords out of his pocket change.
A meagre allowance of money or wages.
In your case:
1 million is a mere pittance for Goldman Sachs
(informal, figuratively) A very small or insufficient amount (especially of a salary).
In your case:
1 million is peanuts for Goldman Sachs
Note that 'pittance' is more formal and 'peanuts' is more informal, so choose whichever is most appropriate for your intended audience.
For companies (not for people), the term "take it out of petty cash" could be used.
Petty (from the French, "petit", small) cash is designed to be "effectively ignorable money that can be used for stuff that costs less than the internal cost of expensing it". Donuts for a meeting; a box of pens; that sort of thing.
Now big companies - especially big companies in the financial sector like Goldman Sachs - tend to actually be more "rule-bound" about tiny expenses than many small companies. Partly it's a "you can't be blamed if you follow the rules even when they're stupid, but you absolutely can be blamed if you don't, even if you save money"; partly it's the fact that they're under significantly more onerous and more powerful auditing régimes ("failed SEC audit" is a heart-stopping phrase on Wall Street); and partly it's because petty cash embezzlement and reporting fraud has in the past been common, and can add up quickly. But the idiom still exists.
Here's another answer that doesn't end in "change" - rounding error:
A figure that is or seems large in isolation but is relatively small or immaterial to a large company.
The settlement of $300,000 is little more than a rounding error to a global corporation that earns billions of dollars each year.
- pennies A small sum of money.
To use it in the quote in the OP: "1 million is basically pennies for Goldman Sachs"
(Although it doesn't end in "change" and isn't only used when describing someone rich, as specified in the OP)
Requires turning the sentence around a bit, but:
Goldman Sachs could find 1 million dollars just by digging in their couch cushions.
You could replace that with other expressions for places where normal people might find small amounts of money, e.g.:
etc.
When I was taking a training course for a ridiculously high-paying (at the time) contract in the Middle East, we were constantly being reminded by our lecturer in "cultural acclimatisation" that we would be in a position such that lack of money for casual (and not-so-casual) recreational espenses would in due course not be an issue.
The phrase he used for the monetary quantities involved, over and over again, was:
"A mere bagatelle."
Another possibility is 'spare change'. In the UK, the phrase 'spare change' is regularly used and heard. It is associated with people living on the streets as they appeal for 'spare change' from passers by.
As has already been mentioned 'small change' is also regularly used to describe the few coins people may have in their pockets, but I would say the more common phrase for that would be 'spare change'.
This is a rarer idiom than some of the others listed like "pocket change" and "peanuts", but common in my area is the phrase "decimal dust". It refers to the small value, when compared to a large value, as being so small it's like dust particles.
Examples:
"The cost to [add precipitation reporting] is almost decimal dust when it comes to the overall federal budget," says Berginnis, whose group wrote to NOAA about the matter. "We're only talking about $3 million to $5 million a year to produce these data." NPR, An unexpected item is blocking cities' climate change prep
And,
"Before you dismiss four-tenths of one percent as decimal dust, consider this: Although student loans make up only 10% of all consumer debt, the amount of seriously past due student loan payments total nearly one-third of all seriously past-due debt payments." USA Today, Student loan debt: America's next big crisis
This idiom may be seen more frequently to refer to budgets of large organizations and governments, but use it and have heard it used to refer to family and individual budgets as well.
A related idiom (although one that doesn't use the word "change", and isn't strictly related to money) is a drop in the bucket, which indicates a small, insignificant amount. It could be used to describe almost any negligible quantity, although it can carry an additional connotation of insufficiency, where the amount is smaller than what you need or want.
Something that is considered by an individual to be insignificant or unimportant can be described as:
E.g. The fine he received for breaking the law was just small potatoes to him.
