I think some poly scenarios save money (although most are accessible without poly), but poly also gives you new and exciting ways to lose it (these can be replicated without poly too, but it's harder).

If you can't afford your home without everyone's income, then your housing stability is dependent on every relationship in the house. Hope everyone is chore compatible. And is in agreement on if the house allows kid. And everyone's work is near each other. And...

I've seen poly housing (and found family shared housing) go well and save money, but mostly when at least one person had a lot of financial slack (to paper over housemate losses) and no one was so badly off they can't afford to leave. If someone needs the house sharing to work, issues will fester until they become toxic.

I would guess this is somewhat similar to having a network of friends: a polycule is even bound to be smaller. And I can totally imagine being emotionally, romantically, sexually attached to one set of partners and opinion-sharing attached to a slightly different set.

My guess is that there's no home economic alpha to be had in polyamory, on average. This isn't a very strong opinion, but I expect most efficiencies that can be obtained by a polycule (which are similar to those obtained by a family of the same size with kids), will be offset by increased volatility due to complex relationship dynamics (I'm not saying poly people break up more, but that this is simple math of having more people and holding the base rate of breakups constant).

I think there are ways to make home economics more efficient for any particular household, but they are largely orthogonal to relationship style of the people in the house.

I have identified as polyamorous for over a decade. I started and ran a local community for a number of years. I’m not an authority, but I have seen patterns.

If you want to be polyamorous, then do so. I can’t imagine monogamy at this point. Being polyamorous has brought me a lot of happiness and satisfaction.

It can also be stressful, especially when starting out. You are right that it is more work than monogamy. Don’t choose polyamory because of a cost-benefit analysis. Your relationships won’t look like what you expect, your analysis is waisted time and effort.

Choose polyamory if it is right for you. I can make book suggestions, but they’d likely be out of date at this point. Honestly though, you’d likely find them with some Google searches.

Really though? Find your local poly community. Go to a meetup. Talk to people. Listen to their stories. See if they resonate with you.