juice is worth the squeeze

the juice is worth the squeeze

1. (informal) The effort put into something is justified by the outcome.
   • 2008, United States. Congress, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations for 2010:

     Another part of the problem may be that I have talked to one of these folks that were looking for grants, and he told me, Ken, the juice isn't worth the squeeze from trying to get the money from the Feds and the complications that go into this.

   • 2010, Jeff Wiese, Teaching in the Hospital, page 5:

     I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze on this one ... maybe I'll just take the hit on the exam and learn it later.

   • 2014, Revathi Subramanian, Bank Fraud: Using Technology to Combat Losses, page 114:

     We need to ask ourselves whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Let's say we have a perfect fraud model that can completely identify all the fraud occurring in a portfolio. However, if the model takes so long to run in production that it crashes the production system, that model is far from desirable.

   • 2018, John Mason, Seize Today: How Asking the Right Questions Will Change Your Life:

     So our purpose, work, and efforts should result in “juice” worth the “squeeze” of the life we choose.

• Occurs in various other constructions, such as negations and questions; see the citations above.

• not worth the powder
• risk it for the biscuit