Whether your goal is to pay off debt, buy a nice car, get long-term health care, attain a million dollar portfolio, pay for your kids' college expenses, afford a big house, retire, or all of the above, you'll find help with calculating how to manage it with one or more of these superior investment web sites:

• CNBC on MSN Money
• Quicken
• Thomson Investor Network
• Yahoo! Finance

Each of the above sites not only offers practical tools for such calculation but many other investment-related services, all completely free. Each also has been recently recommended as a top web site for investors by both the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) and "Forbes," in its latest "Forbes Favorites" issue.

I checked Thomson Investor Network to see if we might ever be able to afford a larger residence and was happy to learn there is a chance, at least within Val's lifetime.

I then calculated, using "Yahoo! Finance," the prospects of eventual, pre-retirement millionaire status for a young person starting to invest at age 22 and discovered that, with tax-deferred annual investments of just $3000 and an average return of only 7%, the odds are very good indeed.

No online site can be an adequate substitute for doing one's own research into personal finance issues. And you may find it beneficial or even necessary to have one or more in-depth sessions with a certified financial planner to aid in organizing your thinking and concentrating toward high priority monetary decisions. Yet web pages such as those cited are often excellent resources to help you refine a realistic, successful long-term investment program.

(Disclosure statement: Larry and Val have holdings in some of the suggested assets but do not "make a market" in any of them and do not derive any direct benefit from recommending them, except perhaps for a bit of smug self-satisfaction.)