For the first 3 years of our pool ownership, my husband was reluctantly “in charge” of our pool (came with the house so neither of us specifically made the decision to have one) since he was a teacher and home for the summer with extra time. It was a constant effort of things breaking, cleaning, chemicals etc. Last year I finally decided to do something about it so I replumbed most of it and committed to keeping up with regular maintenance (including the end of season shut-down) and once everything got to a usable baseline, it wasn’t that bad! An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! But yes, they are a lot of work and $$$ and I don’t know that I would voluntarily put one in either!

That is a good point about the accessibility increasing your use. You wouldn’t drive to your club to swim for 15 minutes but you might do it at home, like you say. I think you are wise to just anticipate yearly repairs! This is probably what I need to do to adjust my attitude about our hot tub.

@Sarah K – the new (very old) house does have a pool. I’m sure it will need expensive repairs annually, as that seems to be just part of the package with pool ownership. You could join a very very swanky private pool for the cost of pool repairs/maintenance. The trade off is that we can use our pool in May and September (when the public or club ones aren’t open) and we can go in while a kid is napping or for 20 minutes as a break from work and not feel weird about it.
I don’t know that I would ever build one, but since our two suburban houses have had one I can see the upsides. And the downsides. But the upsides too!