Here's a thought, don't do first dates that involve money. They will be more interesting and memorable anyway. Go to the beach, the park, whatever local interesting feature of town you have.

That said I've always been a believer of mass testing. The object of the first date is NOT to impress your partner. Your job is to continue finding out if this is someone you have interest in continuing to spend your time, interest, and emotional energy on. You generally stand the best chance of finding the right partner if you test a lot of them. If you go out a lot, it simply becomes financially unfeasible to continually pay for fantastic first dates. How a woman approaches the bill says a lot about the respect she will have for your money in the future. Unless you have taken her out to something clearly beyond her financial means, I believe that the woman should offer to pay her share and fully expect to do so--not as a fake gesture just to get you to say "no, I've got it."

I even do this with friends...if someone insists on paying, i generally follow it up with "I'll let you get it this time, but next time it's on me" That removes awkwardness for next time, and generally, people are pretty agreeable about it.

I also like the no-money date idea and I agree with Brian about getting to know someone without having the obligation to go all out every time. I gets expensive. It's just as much fun hitting the free music festivals around town as it is to go to a fancy pants restaurant.

It's simple. Whoever does the inviting and planning pays. If you invite someone out and expect them to pay for it, without prior consultation, I see it as crass, rude, self-centered and generally not nice.

ok, this is an easy one. It doesn't matter who pays what. What matters is that the parties involved each have an opinion, express their thoughts on the matter, and then reach an agreement.

I prefer my date to pick up the check, so if he automatically does just that, everything is fine. If he asks me to split it, I will do that, of course, but there will likely not be a 2nd date. That's just me.

Another woman will have different expectations. Fine. As long as everybody is up front about it. First dates are about getting to know a person. That includes ideas about (potential) shared finances.

Another alternative date: invite her over to your place for a home-cooked meal. Anything is better than the overly stiff stereotypical image people have of the "dinner interview at a fancy restaurant" first date.

It might also interest folks to know that I did a pseudo-scientific study on how many women expected me to pay on the first date. At one point in my dating life, I started getting systematic about it and keeping track of what happened from the initial meet through the first few dates.

The vast majority of women insisted on splitting the bill without me saying anything at all, women who expected me to pay for everything on the first date accounted for about 4%.

Though I have to say something that made the bill a little less awkward on dinner dates was splitting the date into two halves. Dinner at one place and drinks at a different place. If a date seemed to be going well and I was still into it, I'd suggest we go for drinks someplace else (before the bill comes). Then when the bill comes and the woman starts getting nervous about what to do for her share it's real easy to just say, "you know what, let me get this and you can take the drinks if you want." If I wasn't into it, I really didn't care if she was impressed by my paying for the first date because there wasn't going to be another one anyway.