San Francisco: 5 best July values

Budgeting is boring. But Mint.com's new travel-budgeting tool is (almost) fun to use because it makes it super-easy to estimate how much an upcoming trip will cost. The tool also encourages you to stick to a savings program and skip impulse purchases that can derail you from your travel goals. Mint is Quicken's digital service used by more than 2 million Americans to track personal finance info via the Web and smartphone. Once you create a free account, you can set savings goals for things like retirement or children. Starting today, travel is another goal you can save for. Type in your destination, the number of days you'll stay, length of stay, number of travelers, and other information. Ballpark how much plane tickets, hotels, rental cars, and other major expenses will cost. The niftiest part is you can make good use of this info by linking up Mint with your vacation fund, such as an online ING Orange Savings Account. As the money piles up in your account, Mint will update you on how close you are to being able to go on vacation. If you fall behind, set up alerts to prod you to get back on track. Mint will also suggest ways to juice up your returns by picking a higher-yielding account or by switching to a smarter travel rewards credit card. Signing-up for Mint takes about five minutes, I've found. Punch in your account details for as few, or as many, bank and credit card accounts as you like. The service then downloads the records on how much you spend, tagging your expenditures by categories. For instance, credit card charges to Hyatt or Delta are instantly labeled "travel" expenses (or a custom label you choose to put on them). Mint gives you a snapshot of your spending habits. It's easy to see how if you cut the spending in some category, such as Dunkin Donuts coffee, you'll have more to spend. What about the security of your personal data? I asked Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, about that. He pointed out that Mint doesn't reveal your account numbers or personal identifying information, so if anyone was able to break into your Mint account, they wouldn't be able to push a button and drain your savings. The encryption level is as strong as the security systems used by major national bank chains use for their online-banking tools. (Patzer says it's never been compromised.) What's more, Mint can actually help you fight theft by alerting you when there's unusual activity in your accounts. MORE A bon voyage for less? (15+ comments)

The summer after college graduation is the perfect time to strap on a backpack, book a plane ticket to some far-flung destination, and go on a find-your-life's-purpose journey. But in an era when mounting student loans easily reach into the tens of thousands, student travel isn't as guilt-free as it once was. Every little penny of outside assistance helps. The best solution? Enlist the help of family and friends desperately trying to find you a great graduation gift! Just in time for high school and college graduation season, discount student travel agency STA Travel has launched the Travel Registry. Like a bridal registry, this initiative allows users to create an online account and then populate their digital wish lists with all of the ingredients for the perfect dream vacation: flights, train tickets, bus passes, accommodations, tours, cruises, and nature treks. Hankering for an Antarctic expedition or an Amazonian rainforest trek? How about a leisurely tour of London or Tokyo? With just a few clicks, you can add these tours to your customized list. Jazz up your profile page with messages, photos, and videos to help encourage (read: beg) your relatives to donate to the cause. Put on a beret and speak in your best French accent to ask Aunt Ruth for that flight to Paris. Tug at Grandma's heartstrings by writing a heartfelt message about your desire to bring old children's books to an orphanage in Malawi. Family and friends can then sign on and buy any or all of your suggested gifts or donate part of the funds toward an expensive trip. Grads, it's not too late to start making your wish list. Because we all know a Kenyan safari sure beats an engraved ballpoint pen or a smart wrist watch any day of the week. FYI: Take a peek through Budget Travel's 2010 Dream Trips package for some exciting wish list ideas.

Starting this month, Americans of Danish descent have a new way to learn about their heritage and to enjoy walking tours in Denmark. A new site, 1000.stories.dk, publishes fun mini-histories of the country, written by a group of Danish scholars and journalists. Each "story" is boiled down into a short snippet that can be read or listened to on mobile phones and GPS devices. (In July, the English mobile version will be available.) For travelers, it's an ideal companion to a day on the sightseeing circuit. There's offbeat information like the location of Denmark's first traffic light, its oldest souvenir shop, and the annual Woodstock-like music festival in Roskilde. Personally, I'd go for the hot dogs at the Pilot Grill, a popular spot for local airplane buffs. Model airplanes dangle from the ceiling above tables that overlook the airport's main runway. Along the way, you'll hear amusing tales, such as about the time when Marie-Antoinette shopped for gloves during her visit in the 16th century. MORE Follow Visit Denmark on Twitter @DenmarkFeelFree Copenhagen is My City [Intelligent Travel] Six reasons to visit Denmark, the world's happiest country [from Four Hour Workweek]

Is it just me, or could TripAdvisor do more to court gay and lesbian travelers? The giant of user-generated hotel reviews doesn't let you filter reviews by sexual preference—to zero in on reviewers like yourself—the way it allows users to filter reviews by special categories like business, family, couples, friends getaways, and solo travel. The site also seems to shy away from officially acknowledging the presence of the LGBT community. It goes without saying that gays and lesbians travel for business, with families, and so forth—so many of TripAdvisor's filters have broad appeal. But LGBT travelers have unique concerns. When we're picking hotels, for instance, we often wonder whether the front-desk clerks are well trained and well mannered. If they aren't, they'll make a silly mistake when a same-sex couple asks for a single king bed: They'll act weird about it. And weirdness is exactly what I want TripAdvisor to help me avoid. I've also noticed that the U.S. division of TripAdvisor has never put out a press release or marketing campaign acknowledging gays and lesbians. A month ago, its U.K. branch produced its first list of the Top 10 Gay & Lesbian-Friendly Hotels in Europe, and I hope this anticipates a formal acknowledgement of the crowd here in the States, too. How about a simple Top 10 List of Gay-Friendly Hotels in America? All I wish is for the Internet's leading hotel review site to do as much to welcome LGBT travelers as nearly every airline, hotel chain, and major destination does. Online travel site Orbitz has a microsite for gay travelers, as does Travelocity. Major airlines have LGBT marketing, such as American Airlines' aa.com/rainbow. Nearly every major U.S. and European city seems to have a webpage or a brick-and-mortar kisok dispensing LGBT travel information, such as Seattle's and London's gay-tourism portals. In fact, the U.S. travel industry as a whole has a proven track record of being much better about courting the gay customer than other industries. To its credit, TripAdvisor allows its users to post info about LGBT travel on its site, particularly in its Gay Travel Forum. Users have posted travel guides ranging from the best LGBT-friendly lodging in New Hampshire to the most LGBT-friendly neighborhoods in Paris. For instance, guides on Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Dublin, Ireland, have lots of helpful info. But allowing your users to ask each other trip-planning questions on your Travel Board is nothing special. What's more: While thousands have participated in TripAdvisor's forums, I bet most TripAdvisor users aren't even aware the forums exist. The site could do more to promote these forums. As of today, on the homepage for TripAdvisor's forums, the Gay Travel Forum isn't listed. (Though things like "Rugby World Cup 2010" are listed.) You have to click "see all" to find it. Some people might say, you can't measure "gay-friendliness," but there are proven proxies for estimating it. Reviews are one way. If TripAdvisor started collecting user-information on how gay-friendly a hotel is, it could build a powerful database. It could add a checkbox on the review form giving a reviewer a chance to mention their interest in LGBT friendly hotels. Another way to judge a hotel is by how it treats its staff because that affects how the staff treats the guests. Will the housekeepers give a same-sex couple second looks? They probably won't if the hotel makes a policy of not discriminating against LGBT staff. TripAdvisor could add a little tag to the listing for any hotel that has been TAG Approved, namely a hotel vetted by an independent organization for its employment policies, services, and support returned to the LGBT community (and not for pay-for-placement deals). At the end of the day, this is a missed business opportunity for TripAdvisor—gay travelers seem to travel more than the average American and should be a growth market for the site. Parent company Expedia was the first major travel site to offer specific content for the gay and lesbian travel market back in 2001, which leads me to think its TripAdvisor division is simply making an oversight. What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?