As you might remember from a few days ago, my money vice is vacations. So I’m always on the lookout for things that will make our travel cheaper, which included signing up for the Travelzoo Top 20 deals email newsletter.

I’ve been getting the weekly emails, plus some unscheduled last-minute offers or promotions, for the last few months and the deals have been pretty astounding. I think it has to do with the recession and the last minute nature of many of the offers. If you’re flexible, you can get some amazing rates on cruises, flights, hotels, and shows.

Dunhill Vacations is another company like Travelzoo. They’re not a travel agency but a deal collector and publisher. Their main website lists a bunch of offers and while they don’t have a “top 20″ list, they do have plenty offers listed. There isn’t much more to say other than that I signed up for their free newsletter and you can to if you’re interested. I haven’t received one yet but I think it’ll probably be a lot like Travelzoo’s emails. (and like Travelzoo, they don’t sell your information, which is very important)

If you’re already a subscriber, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. I figure that it’s free and I can unsubscribe whenever I want so I might as well. You never know, you might save a few bucks or find some insane last minute deal that makes it all worth it.

We’ve all shared our dream vacations, but what is your favorite vacation? What’s a place you absolutely love going to?

For me, my favorite vacation has to be to Hawaii (one of the reasons I’m a huge fan of my friend Sheila’s GoVisitHawaii.com blog, it’s an almost daily reminder of how beautiful and awesome the 50th state is). My wife and I went there for our honeymoon a year and a half ago. We spent a week on Kauai, half a week on the Big Island, and half a week on Oahu, and sometimes I feel as though our hearts never left.

If you’ve never been, Hawaii is gorgeous. Kauai is the least developed and least touristy of the main islands and we were big fans of that. We went whale watching and snorkeling near Poipu with Captain Tara (Kauai Sea Riders), who was a friend of a family friend, we went ATV riding, took a helicopter ride around the island, and did all sorts of hiking. On the Big Island, we stayed a couple days in Hilo (the verdant and more rainy side) and then a couple in Kona (the drier side); enjoying the beach, snorkeling, and such. Finally on Oahu, we visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial, where you could easily spend an entire day seeing the memorial, Bowfin submarine, and the Battleship Missouri.

What’s your favorite vacation?

In a couple months, my wife and I will be taking an extended vacation to Europe. It’ll be a fantastic trip, one we’ve been looking forward to for months, and with the dollar strengthening and the economy across the world weak, we figured we could take advantage of lower prices to get some traveling done.

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Are you a Priority Club member? If so, Priority Club and EverBank are running a promotion where you can get up to 10,000 points by opening accounts at EverBank. EverBank is probably one of the best banks out there because they have four stars from BankRate’s Safe & Sound ratings system, are FDIC insured, and offer a very good interest rate. The current interest rate offering is 3.51% 3-month Bonus Rate followed by a 2.73% 1st year APY up to balances of $50k – among the best of online banks. A great rate plus a 10,000 point bonus offer equals a solid promotion.

You can earn the maximum 10,000 points by opening all three accounts, here’s how it breaks down:

• Yield PledgeSM Money Market Account – 5,000 points
• FreeNet® Checking Account – 2,500 points
• Yield Pledge Certificate of Deposit – 2,500 points

Read the terms and conditions carefully because you need to meet some conditions before you get the points. With the Money Market Account, you need to open with a minimum of $1500 and then maintain an average monthly balance above $5,000 for at least one statement period during the first three statement periods after the account opening. The conditions are very straight forward and very easy to accomplish, just be sure to check them out.

Curious what 10,000 points can get you? It varies from locale but you can look it up on the Priority Club Redeem points page.

Thanks Matt, for clueing me onto this promotion in the first place!

My wife and I will be going to England to visit good friends of ours and so after researching the best international credit card, we settled on a Capital One card.

Now came the somewhat mind-numbing task of notifying our cards of international travel so that we wouldn’t get declined. The process for each was pretty straight forward but I’ve listed instructions for all the cards I called up. I imagine they all do pretty much the same thing but it’s always good to get concrete information.

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