It depends on the age of your kids, if they are already young teens and you don’t really like pools then you will be saddled with it, once the kids get cars, they get their own lives. I had one, like sc, I loved it but put it in when the kids were little and got ten good years out of it before it became infrequently used. Like patiently mentioned, if it’s pretty and you have some sort of waterfall from the jacuzzi to the pool, the sounds alone make cigar smoking more fun. If you do it, get a spa as well, I used that more than the pool. I agree that they basically free when buying right now, so what the heck, but dropping 50k on one is probably a bad call. Heating was never costly, chems are cheap, it’s easy to do yourself but the pumps have to be run every day for hours, I’d say $200 in electric. I had my pool house a year and then put in the pool, it doubled my electric. Like most things, the old ones aren’t efficient, if you buy a house with a 20 year old filtration/pump system, it will be an electricity whore. I’m told the newer ones are much cheaper to run. The compromise is an hoa with a pool as opposed to the Y or a city pool, but it all comes down to economics, do you have the money? If a pool is going to cut into your food money, don’t do it, if it is going to mean you will only get to go to hawaii twice instead of three times, who cares. If it means driving a ford and having a pool or a bmw and no pool, get the pool. Maintenance wise, it’s probably a draw when compared to a lawn.

If you do put one in or buy a house with one, run electric and cable out to the spa and put in a t.v. out there. The one thing I miss is sitting in the spa, buck naked, with a bottle wine and cigar, watching the laker game on a tuesday night. Some luxuries in life cannot be given a dollar value.