the shoemaker's children go barefoot

Proverb

the shoemaker's children go barefoot

1. One often neglects those closest to oneself; a tradesman may ironically neglect or postpone his own home's need for his trade's services.
   • I've got a lovely wife who's a professional photographer, three lovely grown children, a lovely old dog with bad hips and a good disposition, and an old house which is always in desperate need of repairs. My wife says that’s because the shoemaker's kids always go barefoot and the carpenter’s house...1999, Stephen King, “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling”, in Hearts in Atlantis, Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 493
   • Traditionally, ‘the shoemaker's children go barefoot’; i.e., users of computational statistics ignore statistical issues—such as sensitivity analysis—of their simulation results.2004, Yuichi Mori, Handbook of Computational Statistics: Concepts and Methods, Springer, →ISBN, page 498

   Synonyms:

   the cobbler's children are the worst shod, the cobbler's children go barefoot, the cobbler's children have no shoes, the shoemaker's son always goes barefoot