Extreme Frugalness Story: Moving a Pool

moving a poolI saw this pool outside our local Wal-Mart on my last visit there and it brought back some memories. When I had owned a truck we bought one for the kids at our last house. The kids loved it and it worked really well for my younger son, because the slide built into it was the right size for him to actually be able to slide down on it. Another nice feature of this pool is that it has a drain plug, which makes emptying and moving a pool easier.

When it came time to move about 3 years ago my truck had been sold and we didn’t want to rent a truck, so we moved virtually everything over in the Van. Fast forward a few months and it looked like our house was going to sell, in fact we were scheduled to close in 3 days. I realized we still needed to get the pool out of there, but I couldn’t get a hold of anyone with a truck. My options were very limited, either rent a U-haul for this plastic pool and pay around $30, or destroy it and throw it in the trash. I then chose Option C.

Option C was to carry the pool from the old house to the new house, according to google earth, this is just over 5 miles. I drove to the old house and parked my car there, my intent was to carry the pool to the new house and then ride my bike back to the old house and get my car, before Mrs. C. got home and told me I was crazy.

I had some experience carrying one of these pools before, although it was under half the distance. We had bought the same pool at Wal-Mart for my nephews birthday, and we THOUGHT it would fit in the Van, but it totally didn’t. We tried to tie it to the roof of the van, which only got us about a quarter mile down the road before it started falling off the side. I decided to carry it to our house, and then from there I could find someone with a truck to drive it to my nephews house. I only had to go about 2 miles, and it worked out pretty well.  You do tend to get some strange looks while walking down the street carrying a giant pool.

One nice thing about carrying a pool like this on a hot summer day is that it provides shade. The major downside is the wind, which turns the pool into a sail rather quickly. When I got to the overpass crossing I-94, I was scared the wind was going to pull the pool, and possibly myself, over the highway. The last mile was the hardest because I had to walk on a busy 4 lane road without a sidewalk, or even much of a shoulder.

We got two more summers out of the pool. I actually had duct taped a couple tears in it to keep it working for the last season.  This year we changed the function of the pool to housing rocks.  We had a lot of left over pea gravel from an outdoor project, so for now we are storing the excess in the pool.

What things in retrospect did you do to save a few bucks that in hindsight seems a bit crazy?

John C. started Action Economics in 2013 as a way to gain more knowledge on personal financial planning and to share that knowledge with others. Action Economics focuses on paying off the house, reducing taxes, and building wealth. John is the author of the book For My Children's Children: A Practical Guide For Building Generational Wealth.

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