Why do people join annual pool membership?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of our friends are at the pool. The BBQ occurs at the pool. The kids go to the zoo and museums as part of school field trips. They're not interested in going on the weekends in the summer.

+1 People I know with pool club memberships want to be with people "like themelves" at the club.

Pool memberships cost like 1k for the summer. A CC membership starts in the mid five figures with ongoing monthly dues of over 500. Not the same thing at all.

1K is substantial in a country where the annual household income for a family of 4 averages 50K. But I guess in DCUMland where everyone makes 400K, 1K is just peanuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of our friends are at the pool. The BBQ occurs at the pool. The kids go to the zoo and museums as part of school field trips. They're not interested in going on the weekends in the summer.

+1 People I know with pool club memberships want to be with people "like themelves" at the club.

Pool memberships cost like 1k for the summer. A CC membership starts in the mid five figures with ongoing monthly dues of over 500. Not the same thing at all.

1K is substantial in a country where the annual household income for a family of 4 averages 50K. But I guess in DCUMland where everyone makes 400K, 1K is just peanuts.

NP. Ok but trying to liken them to country clubs, with a five or six figure initiation fee (which you forfeit if you ever move and leave the club) is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of our friends are at the pool. The BBQ occurs at the pool. The kids go to the zoo and museums as part of school field trips. They're not interested in going on the weekends in the summer.

+1 People I know with pool club memberships want to be with people "like themelves" at the club.

Pool memberships cost like 1k for the summer. A CC membership starts in the mid five figures with ongoing monthly dues of over 500. Not the same thing at all.

1K is substantial in a country where the annual household income for a family of 4 averages 50K. But I guess in DCUMland where everyone makes 400K, 1K is just peanuts.

Yes, it's a substantial cost, but we go to the pool instead of other summer entertainment (this year including vacation).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we invite friends to the pool and either order food or grill. Our pool allows alcohol too so it is nice to enjoy a couple of beers or a glass of wine while kids happily swim.

our pool also has food trucks come, has movie night, etc.

This pool sounds pretty cool, where is it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we invite friends to the pool and either order food or grill. Our pool allows alcohol too so it is nice to enjoy a couple of beers or a glass of wine while kids happily swim.

our pool also has food trucks come, has movie night, etc.

This pool sounds pretty cool, where is it?

Sounds like Daleview in Silver Spring. Pretty nice, lots of shade. The wait list is around 2 years but it might be possible to get a summer membership (not a full membership) after one year on the list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Judging from your writing, you are not a native born American, right? Having a pool membership is a part of a typical suburban American childhood. Swim team, bbqs, socializing with friends. It's just what you do, it's the custom. Also, it's a far cry from a country club and has nothing to do with being similar people. Anyone can buy a membership.

You know there is more than 1 person posting here, right? I'm a native born American and no one where I grew up had pool memberships. We went to public pools (where we had swim teams) and socialized with our friends. Your "custom" is not the universal American experience.

It's a D.C. area thing. I'm the child of immigrants and grew up in Virginia and during the summers everything revolved around the pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Judging from your writing, you are not a native born American, right? Having a pool membership is a part of a typical suburban American childhood. Swim team, bbqs, socializing with friends. It's just what you do, it's the custom. Also, it's a far cry from a country club and has nothing to do with being similar people. Anyone can buy a membership.

You know there is more than 1 person posting here, right? I'm a native born American and no one where I grew up had pool memberships. We went to public pools (where we had swim teams) and socialized with our friends. Your "custom" is not the universal American experience.

I am from Ohio, ground zero of the opiod crisis, and my middle class family had a pool membership every summer. My mom joined this year. $75 for the summer!

[Anonymous]

There aren't no public pools close to me. I get out of work early enough some days in summer that we go the pool and bring dinner or buy from a food truck if it's there. It's 3 miles from us. We can go for an hour or two on the weekend and still do other activities. Swim team, friends from school and neighborhood go there. It doesn't limit what else we can do. We don't spend all the time at the pool but it's a nice easy place to go when the kid and dh are restless in the evening or we have no plans on the weekend.

[Anonymous]

We are in fairfax county. There are no nearby public pools. We join the local swim club that is closest to our house.

Our friends are at the pool and we do BBQ, pizza, etc there while the kids all play.

[Anonymous]

We have friends and relatives who live at the pool because their kids do swim team. We held off on joining for years because we don't have swim team kids and we didn't know how often we'd go given we travel 2 weeks a summer and the kids do camps a few weeks. We finally joined last year and the kids enjoyed it but honestly it was a huge expense when broken down over the number of visits. We found we didn't want to go on weekends when it was crowded (we don't have many friends at our pool so it's not very social for us). This year we gave it another shot since we'd enjoyed last year but I think we've been no more than 10x. If we go another 4 before we head out of town before Labor Day, that will bring us to 14 visits. That's $42 a visit! It definitely pays for a swim team family but I don't see how it's worth the money for other families unless they don't really travel or do camp.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have friends and relatives who live at the pool because their kids do swim team. We held off on joining for years because we don't have swim team kids and we didn't know how often we'd go given we travel 2 weeks a summer and the kids do camps a few weeks. We finally joined last year and the kids enjoyed it but honestly it was a huge expense when broken down over the number of visits. We found we didn't want to go on weekends when it was crowded (we don't have many friends at our pool so it's not very social for us). This year we gave it another shot since we'd enjoyed last year but I think we've been no more than 10x. If we go another 4 before we head out of town before Labor Day, that will bring us to 14 visits. That's $42 a visit! It definitely pays for a swim team family but I don't see how it's worth the money for other families unless they don't really travel or do camp.

We dropped ours a few years ago when I figured we were at $250/visit (went about 4 times). We used to go a lot but now are away most of the summer and just didn't use it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we invite friends to the pool and either order food or grill. Our pool allows alcohol too so it is nice to enjoy a couple of beers or a glass of wine while kids happily swim.

our pool also has food trucks come, has movie night, etc.

This pool sounds pretty cool, where is it?

Sounds like Daleview in Silver Spring. Pretty nice, lots of shade. The wait list is around 2 years but it might be possible to get a summer membership (not a full membership) after one year on the list.

Daleview rocks! I think the PG pool also has food trucks, etc.

[Anonymous]

For the dubious benefit of socializing with the people they already know

We buy the ~$300 MoCo family outdoor pool pass every summer, which gives us access to all MoCo county pools (slides, lazy rivers, lap pools, etc), and infinitely prefer that to our Bethesda-area private pools, which are generally smaller and offer less amenities (our friends invited us to a few). Amazingly, these private pools have waiting lists and are much more expensive!

Plus, MoCo pools have their summer swim teams. The Bethesda Barracudas is seeded 4th in Division A, and friendly to boot.

[Anonymous]

Our pool is our summer home and our summer family. My kids do swim team, we have friends there we don't see much of during the winter but get to hang out with daily during the summer. There are adult nights, movie nights, food trucks, etc. We aren't rich-this is our big summer expense. My kids don't do camps or anything else. They are beautiful swimmers and I feel like there's something really magical about our summers at the pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we invite friends to the pool and either order food or grill. Our pool allows alcohol too so it is nice to enjoy a couple of beers or a glass of wine while kids happily swim.

our pool also has food trucks come, has movie night, etc.

This pool sounds pretty cool, where is it?

Sounds like Daleview in Silver Spring. Pretty nice, lots of shade. The wait list is around 2 years but it might be possible to get a summer membership (not a full membership) after one year on the list.

Daleview rocks! I think the PG pool also has food trucks, etc.

We are at Glenwood and also have grills, movies, food trucks etc. I think a bunch of the nearby pools have similar. Actually, it seems that many of the pools throughly Montgomery at least some of that.