Enter Date Value In Console App?

according to the assignment my program fills the requirements, however it's a real pita to constantly change the dates in the program every time I want to run different date values. Is there a way to have the user input a date? Initially I thought something like;

purchaseDate = new datetime(console.readline())

but this blows up. I get an error that sounds something like invalid data type cannot convert double to long... it's a very unhappy looking error heh

Anyhow, I've spent several hours digging through the MSDN Library but I'm not finding it which assumes it can be done in this format.

after reading a few other posts I don't want folks thinking I'm trying to be sly so...

Dim datePurchased, datePaid As DateTime
Dim str1, str2 As String
Dim compare1 As Double

[Code].....