Swimming Pool

At the last home a swimming pool was a must.  Twenty-five K later it had been excavated, plastered, decked, fenced in and filled with well over 20,000 gallons of Cowtown water.  Did we get 25k worth of fun out of the pool.  Nope.  Mostly, it just sat there, looked pretty and added big bucks to the electric and water bills.

Nine years after leaving that home for this one, the urge to dump more money into building a swimming pool is rearing its ugly head.  This time a 25K pool has translated into more like a 40 or 50 thousand dollar hole in the ground. 

I ask myself if I really want to spend that kind of dough on a pool.  There are alternatives.

A.  Above ground plastic pool.  Ugly.

B.  Redneck pool as seen in the photo.  Right up my alley.  Got the pickup truck.  There's a tarp of two laying around the house.  Cheap!   Neighbors will love me even more than they love me now.

C.  Continue to use the Elks Lodge pool.  They serve lunch:  Five buck burger and fries, 2 buck 16 ounce draft beer.  Freaking deal, people. And the pool is usually populated with only a handful of folks who look like they would never dream of peeing in the pool.

Apart from start-up costs, there's on-going expenses to maintain a pool in Cowtown.  Electricity:  About $130 a month more than what it is.  Chemicals:  Not sure what they would run but it ain't nothing but money, honey.  If the nest egg isn't used to pay for the pool then there will be monthly loan costs....likely to be around 3 or 4 hundred a month. 

All told, an installed pool will take about 500 bucks a month out of the household budget.  An obligation till death do us part.

Worth it?