I've had outdoor cats, but won't be going out of my way to do so going forward.
We never intended to have any outside, but I'm a softy apparently and we started caring for a few ferals that hung out in our yard. All of them were fixed, and one we fully adopted, but just couldn't bring one in due to his inability to put his butt down in the litterbox (he would go in, but he would end up with pee everywhere so we had to rig a special box inside a rubbermaid container that he would climb into, but if he was in the house unsupervised, he might have gone in our actual indoor cat's normal litterbox and that would have been a mess).
So the one kitty we adopted was fixed, had his yearly checkups and shots, tested periodically to make sure he was okay to be around our indoor cat, and pretty much lived several hours a day in the house, and then slept outside unless it was really bad weather. He was brought in during hard freezes and thunderstorms and was perfectly fine in a closed off room with his own food/water and high sided litterbox and never made any sort of mess at all.
During regular cold weather, we had an insulated doghouse stuffed with old clothes and pillows, but a few other boxes and bins as well, and also had an electric blanket for them that was plugged in and used at night (pushed it into the cathouse, but also draped into some of the bins so there was an assortment of high sided warm spots for kitties to bunk down in), and unplugged each morning. It worked well for all of our cats over the years, but we also live down south where it doesn't get down to freezing too often.
We lost both of our cats this past July (after having them over 13 years). They lived mostly on our back porch in a wooden fenced backyard. Two neighborhood dogs decided that my cats were prey, tore up several planks of our fencing to get into our backyard, and attacked and killed the one cat, and then attacked and carried off the body of another cat we considered ours (she was a feral we could feed and provided shelter for, but she would not come close to let us touch her). During the attack - which were were not aware of at the time as we thought it was just dogs somehow broke into our yard and I went out with a broom to chase them off - I was either scratched or bitten by the lead dog. We thought our cats were up a tree or got away but we discovered our one cat's body while walking the fenceline, and found out about the feral cat that next day. We were pretty heartbroken, and despite filing both a police report and one with animal control, there is absolutely nothing we can do about the property damage and loss of our pets as they couldn't track down the animals. I just hope they don't decide to escape and break into someone else's back yard to go after a small toddler since they are so vicious, but I guess they're on record anyway at this point... so definitely something else to realize. Cats can easily get killed outside, and that's something you'll have to explain to the kids if you have an outdoor cat and something happens. They can get injured more easily too, so the vet bills might be higher as well.
In any case... most cats do not tear stuff up if provided with scratching posts or have litterbox issues. Most of them are pretty neat creatures. Definitely get any animal neutered if you adopt because it's the right thing to do besides having benefits of them not marking territory and making them less aggressive.
And also, please don't adopt an animal if you're not 100% committed to caring for them for their life. Many people consider animals as disposable or decorative and get rid of them after a year or two because they don't want to take care of them any more and that is so very wrong. I get that sometimes circumstances beyond your control might crop up, but they are living breathing creatures that come to love and depend on you and you and your wife should go into this committed to taking care of kitty for their lifetime.
