Last summer, I bought a pool. It was one of those $300 above ground things that you can pick up from Walmart.

My mom and I had a longstanding, wildly unhealthy tradition of baking in the sun and floating. It was our favorite summer pastime. So now, it’s not only one of my favorite summer pastimes, but it feels a little like a connection to her. It’s probably part of why I’m tempting fate and barely wearing sunscreen this summer.

Also, thrifty choice? Sunscreen is expensive. J/K. So is skin cancer.

Welp. My dad actually packed my pool up for me last summer when I went back to work and when he helped me set it back up this year, I was unprepared for what owning a pool actually costs.

Apparently my mom had been taking care of all this nonsense in the past.

First, there’s the testing the kit, which got lost when the pool was packed up last year. I bought some new testing strips – a cheaper option than the full on kit I bought last summer.

$8

Then there was the bucket o’ chlorine.

$29.99

And oops, we lost the thermometer too. Do we really need one? No. But it’s only a few dollars.

$5

Now, if everything had gone according to plan with this pool, sure whatever, $43 isn’t a huge deal.

But then, I went away for work for three weeks with instructions left on the kitchen table of how to care for the pool and the chemicals literally sitting on top of the instructions. The pool was about 20 feet from these instructions, right out the kitchen back door.

I came home to a bright green pool.

Shock.

$7.23

I was home 10 days and then I went to Canada for a long weekend.

I came home to a bright green pool.

Because the filter had stopped working. I muttered to myself and went downstairs into the basement to check the circuit breaker to the outside socket. It seemed fine. I ran an extension cord inside to an outlet I knew worked.

Nothing from the filter. Crap.

New filter pump.

$60

I couldn’t get a clear understanding from the filter pump listing if it came with actual filters.

Package of two spare filters.

$13

Awesome, this filter is half the size of the other filter. So it’s not filtering all that well.

Three packages of shock to try to ungreen the water with the new filter.

$21.69

The water is still very green.

Ok, fine. Drain the pool.

We’ve lost the drain release.

I had to laugh at this point.

I pulled the filter hoses out of the pool to at least start draining it and went inside to look up a replacement drain release on Amazon.

There are none.

Finally find one in the UK.

$5.20 BUT THEY WON’T SHIP TO AMERICA.

First frugal bit of luck, I take a long stick and a heavy rock. Shove the stick up against the release and use the rock to keep it trapped there as the water drains.

Refilling the pool estimated water bill for our county.

$15

Another package of shock.

$7.23

So now we’re at  about $167.15 for the summer, more than half the price of a new pool.

I’ve lost two weeks of use to green water, work schedule aside. That’s like 1/6 of summer, even more this year because it rained like all of June.

To add insult to injury, I stupidly was like, “no, I don’t have an ACE Hardware rewards card when I went in to buy the first package of shock.” By the time I went to get the last package yesterday, I felt pretty stupid.

Always sign up for the free rewards cards.

And the pool is still currently green.

For pete’s sake.

What have you bought that nickeled and dimed you into a sheer rage?