Everyone says having a pool is crazily expensive. I haven't found it to be terrible so far - we have a reasonably priced pool guy, and the fact that we have solar offsets the cost of heating it a lot - but you know what happens when you have to repair your pool? Like, because the plaster, having reached its expiration date, starts cracking and flaking off?

You spend oh my god, so much money having it fixed.

When we applied for our home equity line of credit, a pool renovation was one of the main things we knew we were going to do (and yes, it spiraled off into more renovations, and then more) - but the thing about renovating a pool is that it's such a major expense and such a pain, what with the draining and pouring of concrete and spraying of plaster and etc etc - that if you're going to do it, you don't want to do it more than once. Which means you should probably just do it right the first time.