(KRT) - The 2003 models of the leading personal-finance software already have hit the store shelves, but don't expect any of the excitement you get when new cars hit the showroom in the fall.

Intuit and Microsoft have spiffed up the 2003 Quicken and Money with racier wheels and extra cup

holders, but they've added little new under the hood. In fact, if it weren't for my professional interest in test-driving the latest models, I'd probably be content with the Quicken 1999 that came loaded on our PC and maybe even the version I bought way back in 1987.

Don't get me wrong. I've been a committed Quicken user for 15 years (or should I say that my fixation with it makes my wife wish she could have me committed). Either Money or Quicken, which has long dominated the market and outsells Money by about 2 to 1, can provide invaluable revelations about how to manage your money better.

But most Americans aren't aching to track their frequent-flier miles or to compile a home inventory in case the house burns down. As I see it, there are only two reasons to buy such software: to track your spending and to manage your investments.

Eventually, these programs will be helpful for paying bills and moving money around electronically - just not yet. That's a chicken-or-egg market, and there still aren't enough participating financial institutions and billers to make online bill-paying worth consolidating my eggs online.

Even downloading data from the Web has room to improve. For instance, Quicken apparently can enable me to do everything I want with the E-Trade account I seldom use, but downloading transactions from our mainstay checking accounts at Wells Fargo is cumbersome, and I still must manually input transactions from the Visa card issued by my tiny credit union.

These programs also purport to have useful financial-planning tools, but for reasons I'll go into later, they frequently are no more nourishing than popcorn.

Intuit and Microsoft have added innovations over the years, of course. The biggest ones play off the Internet, often through their fulsome Web sites, Quicken.com and CNBC on MSN Money.

Downloading data from the Web means I no longer must manually input stock quotes each weekend - a ritual I did gleefully during the bull run because I delighted in all the green arrows signifying rising values. The Web connections also provide loads of up-to-date data for, say, analyzing mutual funds or stock. That's something you simply can't get from canned information on a disk.

But as wondrous as this Web-glut is, I don't need Money to e-mail alerts when Intel boss Craig Barrett is going to appear on CNBC-TV. Likewise, given that I try to ignore the "white noise" of daily market moves, I have little use for a list of daily advancers/decliners in the New York Stock Exchange.

More to the point, I'm too old-fashioned. Although Intuit and Microsoft eagerly want me to stow our family's financial data on their servers, it won't happen any time soon, if only because I fear a deluge of spam. Besides, I have no desire to access our financial data from any cybercafe in the world. That's something we do only in the privacy of our den, usually with the shutters drawn.

As a result, manually inserting data into online planning tools can require copious preparation and is excruciatingly slow, at least with my 56K modem and Internet service provider.

That means you've got little choice but to rely on the canned financial-planning tools in Quicken or Money. At first glance, these tools are tantalizing, offering help with everything from reducing debt and tax bills to saving more for college and retirement.

Alas, the "garbage in, garbage out" adage applies here. Quicken and Money presumably can draw on your financial data automatically and leave you to fill in a few blanks. Unfortunately, those blanks can be significant. Among other things, Quicken asked me to project inflation rates, my investment return and how much I'll get from my pension in 2024.

Let's be realistic. Not even Federal Reserve guru Alan Greenspan knows where interest rates will head, my investment outlook has grown more timid since the Nasdaq peaked in 2000, and I must do some serious research to project my pension. If you're like me, you simply guess and promise to research it later. I rarely do, of course.

Still, I can't help but analyze the planning results. I luxuriate in the ones that are green. If they're red, I change the inflation rate or investment return until they're green again. I hope that's not what they call a "flexible" tool.

Even when I have the numbers, however, the software sometimes won't let me use them. For instance, Quicken assumes tax-deferred accounts will be used for retirement. That's fine for our 401(k) and individual retirement accounts. But because of that inflexibility, Quicken's college savings planner doesn't factor in money invested in so-called 529 plans and Coverdell accounts, formerly known as Education IRAs.

If you're choosing one personal-finance software package for the first time, don't be swayed by the sales figures, which show Quicken gobbles up 68 percent of unit sales compared with Money's 27 percent share, according to NPD Techworld. Money deserves a good, hard look. It not only performs the two essential jobs of tracking your spending and investments, but you also might prefer to delve into MSN Money more than Quicken.com. Money's planning tools also are easier to customize, often with the help of audio instructions.

But that's not the yardstick to use if you're already a Quicken user. To switch, you must either be: gaga about some feature like the CNBC-TV guest alert, or mad as hell about some Quicken failure. I can't imagine either will be the case for many people.

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