With the abundance of detailed financial information available on the Web, there's not a money-related question you can't answer, given a modem and a little time. With these resources-which are either free or inexpensinve-you can go mortgage shopping, buy life insurance, get up-to-date tax information, switch credit cards and invest, invest, invest.

If you want to attain fiscal fitness in a hurry, choose one of these gateway pages as a starting point. Each offers dozens of links to financial news, information, education, and other resources.

quote.yahoo.com is a great launching pad for investors - a gateway to fast charts and quotes, current news articles, and the major investment sites on the Web.

www.investorama.com is the most complete directory of investment sites online, with more than 8,136 links in 89 categories, each with a brief description.

www.investorguide.com offers lots of links, including a respectable section of surfers interested in personal finance as well as investing.

www.quicken.com is the kind of resource you'd expect from the leading manufacturer of personal finance and small-office accounting software. Intuit's site contains plaenty of extremely useful data on investing, saving, borrowing, and spending. The site is simple to navigate, and the information especially easy to integrate if you're using Quicken to manage your finances.

Calculator Heaven
Your'll find more than 100 financial calculators at www.financenter.com, covering topics such as cars, homes, savings, insurance, investing, budgeting, retirement, credit lines, and credit cards.

It's the one spot on the Web where you can quickly figure out how much that mortgage is going to cost you, whether to lease or buy that minivan, whether to roll your IRA into a new Roth IRA, how much you'll have for retirement, when you can give up your life insurance policy, which credit card is best, and more.

The calculators are complex enough to be accurate and simple enough to give you answers in just a few minutes. The site holds useful glossaries and charts explaining the finer points of finance, but it's not all educational and impartial: Click "What are the advantages of a platinum card?" and you're put through directly to First USA's application.

If you like your calculators neat and fee of commercial backing, try www.beonthenet.com/calculate.html. This site hosts its own slew of financial calculators, provided by BeOnTheNet Inc., and Internet consulting firm that doesn't have a financial axe to grind.

Mutual Fund Mania
Naturally, every fund company has its own Web site. At a minimum, you should expect fund manager profiles, educational material, and online account access. One that stands out on the Web, just as it does in real life, is Vanguard, with scores of documents about the company's methods of low-cost index investing.

For generic but informative fund information, visit Mutual Fund Education Alliance. There, you'll learn about no-load investing, and be able to click through to many of the dozens of fund companies that sponsor the site.

When you're ready to selct your funds, to Morningstar. Morningstar is the Chicago research firm that knows and rports everything about the funds. At its site, you can download individual fund reports or search for funds that fit your criteria. If you eant to follow the fund industry like an insider, spend some time at www.mfcafe.com, where industry news stays a step ahead of the investment world.

Stock Pickers' Picks
If you're hell-bent on selecting your own stocks, there are a few worthy sites to see. Serious stock pickers will find it worth paying $150 a year for Zack's or $9.95 a month for Standard & Poor's. At Zack's, you get earnings surprises, full reports of analysts' estimates, brokerage research, company screening, and daily e-mail alerts when analysts change their buy and sell ratings.

The S&P site gives you the keys to the company library, the opportunity to select and follow your own protfolio, and specific buy and sell recommendations for your own goals.

When you are ready for that picture that's worth a thousand words, go to Big Charts. this addictive site offers free and fast charting of 50,000 stocks, funds, and indexes. You can get instant charts set up the way yhour wnat them, compare any stock or fund to any index or sector over tany time period, and chart it any way you'd like to see it.

Want to watch the market without constantly surfing the Net? Go to www.infobeat.com/cb/cgi/cb-merc.cgi and submit your e-mail address with a linst of yoru favorite stocks and funds. This advertising-sponsored service will send you news and market updates free of charge.

Finally, don't forget to check the horse's mouth - Edgar, where you get full-text downloads of all the filings a company must do with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Insider Insurance Info
WE all need to learn about life, health, disability and auto insurance, and ther's no better place to get educated than www.insure.com. This site boasts educational articles about current trends in insurance and links to insurance calculators, companies, and search firms. If you're on the hunt for term life coverage, try www.quickquote.com, www.quotesmith.com, and www.insweb.com. All allow you to comb through plicies to find the best one at the right price. Be sure to check all three of these sites before you buy!

Mortgage Minutiae
HSH Associates, in Butler, N.J., has more mortgage data than anyone else, and the firm is pretty liberal about sharing it at its Web site www.hsh.com. You can search for the best reates in your greion, or perform similar searches at www.interest.com and www.mortgagenet.com. All three of these sites provide handy mortgage calculators.

Plastic Watch
Ram Research of Gettysburg, Penn., runs www.cardtrak.com - a site where you can read the latest industry news, shop for the chapest card, the best rebate card, or the one with the most interesting marketing tie-in. Click through to apply online for many cards.

Taxing Sites
Start at www.taxsites.com for a broad directory of everything your'd ever want to know about taxes. For quck updates, check out the pages hosted by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche and the reporting firm Tax Analysts.

The IRS appears far more personable online at , where it offers in-depth information, forms, and instructions. Finally, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee's site at www.Senate.gov/~finance posts full-text versions of new tax laws online before the President signs them.