The Internet is to financial management what the automobile is to transportation. If you want to get there you can still walk or ride a horse. But if you want to get there in time you'll use a car.

Brokerage houses, financial newspapers, business magazines, national and local banks, and just about everyone else involved with finances have increasingly sophisticated Internet presences. Add bright upstarts such as The Motley Fool and The Street.com to the old standards (the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Schwab, and so forth), and there are more than enough Internet financial resources to go around.

All of these sites provide market information and analysis at the speed of light, and they furnish end-users with plenty of online tools to help them do everything from managing their checkbooks to tracking their portfolios.

If you want to know what the market's doing (not what it's done before), log on to any of the sites listed below. Every one of them provides an online, real-time feed from the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and other exchanges to provide you with the latest hard market information. In fact, log on to the Internet site of a business that you've invested in and chances are you'll be shown the latest quote for the company's stock (provided that it's public).

And if you want to know what the latest drop in the price of hog bellies has to do with the state of agriculture, you don't have to wait until your favorite financial newspaper or magazine hits the stands. Market analysis, like stock quotes, streams online in real time, throughout the day and night.

And finally, if you want to see how a stock has performed over the last six months to five years, navigate to your chosen financial management site, plug in the company's stock symbol, and check out the graph. No more boring numbers. Gone are the nasty little details, replaced by a visual presentation that you can understand in a microsecond.

Stock charts and graphs are just the tip of the financial-applications iceberg. How about reviewing a graph of last month's personal expenditures? How about a program that calculates retirement savings and plots the date you can retire? Financial management applications such as these are just some of the tools available on today's Internet. Check out the sites below.

The Motley Fool has received more press and accolades than any two brothers have a right to expect. But in this case, most of the attention is warranted. If it's entertainment and financial edification you want, consider Fool.com.

The site's tag line ("educate, amuse, enrich") gives you an idea of what you'll discover. The top of the home page provides late-breaking news. Below that you'll find plenty of in-depth analysis, including a variety of information organized around specific topics (e.g., Mutual Funds, Retirement, Debt & Savings, etc.). Down the right side you'll find a number of financial management tools such as My Portfolio, an investment tracker.

Big Charts is an example of the kind of specific financial management application that is powerful, easy to use, and compelling. The opening page displays charts on a variety of indexes, but users don't have far to go to obtain access to stock quotes, financial news, market information, or some of the site's excellent charting tools. A Big Reports section provides users with access to a variety of canned charts. Some of the categories worth mentioning: stocks with the largest percent gain; stocks hitting new 52-week highs; and stocks with the largest percent loss in price.

The tag line for TheStreet.com is as compelling as the Motley Fool's: "Ignore us at your own risk." This site has plenty not to ignore. TheStreet.com has received plenty of press coverage, in part because it represents a new publishing paradigm. There is no print counterpart to TheStreet.com. This site focuses its time, energy and resources on providing the best possible information to its subscribers. It allegedly pays its analysts and business writers more, because it doesn't have to spend money on print resources or distribution.

The philosophy appears to have paid off. TheStreet.com provides users with simple stock quotes, late-breaking industry news, and tools to assist users with a variety of tasks. Personal Finance, Commentary, and Markets are just some of the major categories on this site. A traditional left-side table of contents lists approximately 20 other categories that can be quickly accessed.

The Wall Street Journal has also taken advantage of the Internet. It provides subscribers with access to the newspaper's excellent resources on a 24/7 basis. This site opens by providing users with a choice: Europe WSJ, U.S. WSJ, or Asia WSJ. Select U.S. and you get a sense of how the site works. While you'll have access to some current stories, much of this site is designed to encourage you to become a subscriber. Wall Street online does a good job of letting you kick the tires; sign up for a free 30-day subscription and you'll find everything you've come to admire about the print WSJ-only online and better.

Yahoo! Finance. If you're interested in getting a stock quote, shopping for an auto loan, reading about the latest market news, or carrying out just about any other financial management task, Yahoo! Finance is worth checking out. Most Web users are familiar with the Yahoo! look and feel, and Yahoo! Finance stays true to form. Scroll down past the top banner ad and you'll discover financial management riches that include sections on Investing, Personal Finance and Investing News. The right side of the page contains the latest Market Summary. And other sections of the home page will take you to financial management information worldwide.

The Informed Investor is another recently produced site. Like TheStreet.com, the Informed Investor has hired some excellent financial analysts and writers. The home page to this site provides access to columns and articles by seven well-known industry experts. Some of the areas covered include Smart Money, Mutual Funds, and the Tax Adviser.

Forbes.com is similar to many traditional print publications. The company has an excellent, well-known and heavily subscribed magazine, and has wasted no time creating an entirely separate (though similar) Web product.

Along with a plethora of financial and business news, Forbes.com users will also find several of what the site refers to as Forbes' DigitalTools. For the most part these are substantive articles from the Forbes magazine archives, with titles such as "Bargains in Bandwidth" and "Ten Things to Do Before You Die."

Cary Griffith is president of The Electronic Book Co., a Minneapolis-based new media company.