Not about the money at all. Bar > restaurant for the ambiance. You sit closer to her, it is darker, there is ability to touch, and the alcohol is flowing.
Some drinks dates actually cost a similar amount of money to dinner dates. Bar dates are a little better for the reasons you mentioned. However, if you have too many "one date, no sex, no second date" type interactions from bar dates, you're going to feel the financial pinch of it. The best way to avoid too many "one date, no sex, no second date" type interactions is not use a swipe app to arrange dates. For most men, it used to be that swipe apps would result in more quantity of dates that you could arrange through real life approaching. It wasn't an unusual case for men to get more first dates in 2 weeks on a swipe apps than it would date with 6-8 weeks of in-person approaching. In the last 2 years or so, most men are not even getting that benefit, as algorithms are leading to less quantity of options.
Than what are you supposed to do? I'm not inviting a stranger to my house, especially one from OLD. I also live in Houston, Tx so these park dates can only happen on weekend mornings where it's not 90 plus lol.
I need to do a better job validating women before I meet them.
You acknowledged it yourself. You need to do a better job validating women before you meet them. The best way to do this is to eliminate swipe apps from your life. As far as you are concerned, they don't exist. Swipe apps are a completely unnatural way to start interactions with women, even if you do video calls with your prospects prior to meeting them. Video calls have gotten immensely popular within the swipe apps in the last 2 years. While video calls help, there is a better option that exists.
Start every interaction with a woman in real life.
The idea behind starting interactions in real life is to avoid the unpleasant and unproductive outcome of "one date, no sex, no second date". However, most approaches will nowhere and not lead to dates, which is an ok outcome because you won't be spending money on a woman who isn't serious about fuccking. If you validating them in person, you have a better chance of an unproductive date outcome. The downside to this is that you will go on fewer dates. I'll explain why next.
In the 2nd half of the 2000s and during most of the 2010s, a large percentage of men could arrange more dates via dating websites (2000s) and swipe apps (2010s) than they could from hitting the pavement hard and doing in-person approaching. This is because you're exposed to way more singles than you would be from pounding the pavement. When you're doing in-person approaching, you can only be in one place at one time. When you use tech assisted means, it's like being in 10-20 places at one time. In theory, you're going to get more dates doing this and the theory worked in practice for many years.
However, most of these dating website/swipe app arrange dates have always been complete garbage, mostly due to it being so unnatural. They were the "one date, no sex, no second date" variety that would cost you time and money, while the woman gets freebies. Even on drinks dates, the woman usually gets free drinks because of some outdated norm. Due to this outdated norm, during the early part of my career, there were plenty of times I was buying drinks for a woman with a higher annual salary than I had at that time. I thought that was a raw deal.
When you find a good prospect in real life, you probably need to do some date in public with them prior to a date at your home. Bars are probably better than dinners. I like activity/event dates prior to the home sex date, but they are difficult to schedule on weeknights. You really weekend daytime hours for those to happen + a mutual interest in some activity/event. Determining that in a 5-20 minute in-person initial conversation isn't probable, so the drinks date in a bar is the most probable outcome when you find a good prospect.
