One other item I would add to that... Look into the cost of a timer in your poolshed. I lucked out and found water heater timers on clearance at the orange box store. For about $25 I got a pretty good mechanical timer rated to a billion amps. Or whatever. I need it to run between 4-6 hours a day to keep th ealgae out of the deep end on our pool. Any less and things get fuzzy, fast.
I set it to run at night when hydro rates are cheaper and cut all power to the pool in the daytime.
We have a couple of toys that screw into teh jets (squirter flowers and waterfall fountains) that the kids love, so I can be coerced into running the pump for a half hour on a sunny afternoon, but by limiting flow in the daytime, we use less water and less hydro. Usually this is combined with backwashing the filter (30 minutes of toys followed by a backwash or vice versa).
Also, we had a pair of billion-million watt floodlights in the backyard. When we re-landscaped the yard, I ran conduit to the fence and put jam-jar lights on it next to the pool. Now I have about 100 watts back there, fewer shadows, and better mood lighting. Since we aren't playing olympic water-polo the flood lights were really a waste.
If you find your pool is getting cloudy/fuzzy despite chlorine and circulating the water regularly, consider changing the sand in the sand filter (I assume you have a sand filter) Its not a hard job to DIY, but its not pleasant. You should be able to change the sand in a couple of beers worth of time on a nice afternoon. New sand made a big difference for us.