HALF-PRICE HILTONS: Hilton is offering its hotels at 50% off for stays between December 14 and January 7. The details from the website:

Save up to 50% off the Best Available Rate at participating hotels and resorts throughout the Hilton Worldwide portfolio. All stays are eligible to earn Hilton HHonors™ Points.

Save 50% at these participating hotels and resorts:
-Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, Hilton, DoubleTree by Hilton, Embassy Suites, and Hilton Grand Vacations

Save 30% at these participating hotels and resorts:
– Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton, Homewood Suites, and Home2 Suites

This is a legitimately good deal. We checked a few hotels, and indeed the prices were 50% off the lowest room rate. If you have Hilton Gold status (which is easily attainable via the Amex Surpass or the Citi Hilton Gold Reserve), the free breakfast makes the deal even better. One caveat to this deal: New Year’s Eve is out. But if you’ve got some time to kill this Christmas season, a quick getaway to a nearby retreat is a lot more affordable.

SPEAKING OF QUICK, INEXPENSIVE GETAWAYS: If you were a savvy consumer, you would already have some British Airways Avios points saved up. Why? The Points Guy ran an article last week detailing 10 different ways to redeem them. If you want to travel via credit cards, this is a great place to start to educate yourself. We love the Avios program and have put it to good use, and we feel its value is second to none for those of us on the east coast. There are no last-minute booking fees with this program either, which is nice if you’re trying to capitalize on something like the Hilton discount above.

FREE CREDIT SCORES FROM BANK OF AMERICA?:  Mr. and Mrs. PFD have done four credit card applications with Bank of America in the past year, plus a home equity line last year, and every time B of A has given us a credit score upon approval. We’re not sure why, as banks are only required to give you a credit score if you’re denied from credit or if they give you less than the best terms. So either B of A does this for everybody–which would be a great thing for them to do, and which they ought to be boasting about in their marketing materials–or else we didn’t get very good terms. We feel pretty good about our FICO score (see below), so maybe something in B of A’s underwriting criteria causes them to give us a high interest rate? We’ll never pay that rate, of course, so it’s fine with us.

HOW TO HACK CHIPOTLE: If you like to eat at Chipotle, you should definitely take a look here. The 1/2 and 1/2 idea is great! (H/T: The Big Picture)

$10 FROM WAL-MART: Finally, courtesy of Slickdeals: free $10 eGift card when you buy a $100 eGift card at Wal-Mart. If you go to Wal-Mart regularly, go for it! Use the Fatwallet cashback portal for an extra 1.5% cash back.