I feel the same way, though don’t have time to go a ton. It’s so expensive and I force everyone out to get out moneys worth. We may not join next year because we only went a handful of times and it didn’t add up

Our pool is about $800 and I feel like its a bargain. But, my kids do swim and dive team. We went more for recreational swimming when they were younger but during the season we are there almost every day.

so much information

Anonymous wrote:You can get a MoCo county swim pass for $300 for 2 adults and up to 8 kids. Or $550 for the whole year and can visit any county pool as many tomes as you like. Or $70 for 12 visits punch card.
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/rec/memberships/aquaticpasses.html

Nova has far fewer public pool options.

I go to the pool a lot because I enjoy being there, not to get my moneys worth.

Our pool costs $1100. There's no way we're getting our money's worth.

You can get a MoCo county swim pass for $300 for 2 adults and up to 8 kids. Or $550 for the whole year and can visit any county pool as many tomes as you like. Or $70 for 12 visits punch card.
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/rec/memberships/aquaticpasses.html

which pools do you all belong to?

If you already want to go to the pool, then great. But if you spent money on something and it turned out you didn’t enjoy it, I would not want to keep going to get my money’s worth. To me, that’s worse than wasting the money you spent, because now you are adding wasted time plus the opportunity cost of not doing something you would have enjoyed more. I know you are being more lighthearted and this isn’t your situation, but I think people too often keep making bad decisions because they already have invested so much into something, rather than accepting the sunk cost as gone and moving on.

I used to think it was expensive, we only have one kid, but during Covid when I looked at the price it was literally the same as 2 weeks of camp but for the entire summer and most camps weren’t open in 2020.
So we joined. I definitely feel like we get our moneys worth out if it, my kid loves swimming and has a good group of friends at the pool.
It’s even cheaper now that our initiation fee is done. It was $550 for the summer which is less than 2 weeks of camp.

Hah, I’m pretty sure this is how I’m able to get my frugal and sedentary husband to go swimming with me every night. He wants to get his moneys worth!

Op here, two kids and both parents wfh 8-4 so about 20 all family visits (with all 4 of us) with a few solo or one parent plus one kid visits. Hence, 100 ish visits collectively. I wish we could have used it more but we were traveling 2weeks and then some bad air quality days. Oh well, gotta get our money’s worth

From Memorial Day to Labor Day is about 100 days. Are you going every day? Twice or three times a day?

100 visits? You have to be a SAHM.

Anyone else feel a sense of satisfaction when you go to the pool more and feel the price per visit per family member amount dropping? We are a rental this yr which isn’t cheap (850 ugh) but as we approach the 100 visit mark it’s feeling more and more worth it. And oddly enough, knowing we paid so much for it makes me hustle to get us to all go more, which is only a win for exercise.

It’s irrational bc the amount we’ve spent is the same whether we go 120 times collectively this summer or if we only went a few times, but I am cheap and the type of person who looks fwd to my mortgage ending some day so I can feel the satisfaction of living “free.” (I know, I know it’s not really free) gotta get that bang for the buck.

That said, with the upfront cost of joining a private pool here, membership, or paying for a rental, I understand why swimming is such an unequal pastime and so many Americans can’t swim (not even to mention Jim Crow segregation and how they chose to close or defund public pools out of refusal to integrate). Even public rec swimming is $10 or so per person per visit, so say you take 3 kids it’d be 40 a visit, which is painful to want to plunk down repeatedly. The upfront big $600 to 900 fee due in May fee is painful at the time to send in, but then you have the psychological comfort of having already paid so now you just enjoy it and in our case, it makes us want to use it more, which helps my kids swim better and facilitates inequality. That is great that pools are free in DC I believe. (We are in nova, classic pool founded in 1960s when white Virginians were resisting integration en masse)