There's an old joke: "What is a boat? It is a hole in the water into which you throw money."<br />
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So, what is a <i>swimming pool</i>? It's a hole in the ground into which you throw water <i>and</i> money.<br />
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Swimming pools are fun a few times a year; the rest of the time they are work. If you've got kids from 8 to 18, they're fun almost every day when the water is warm enough. [Aside: "warm enough" for New England is 75 degrees, while it's 85 degrees for we Southerners.]<br />
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The rest of the time, you've got two choices with swimming pools — keep them clean and clear or let them go cloudy and green. Said differently, do you want to clean leaves and twigs out of the pool every couple days and keep feeding it chlorine and algae killer all the time, so you can have a clean pool, or do you want to ignore it and let it go? If you let it go, then your cleanup cost is more like $125 for big doses of shock and algae killer, plus a bunch of your time and frustration.<br />
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Maybe the pundits have it right — buy a house with a pool. Then, when you kids grow out of it, move!