After nearly two decades in the business, Microsoft plans to stop selling its Microsoft Money personal-finance software, a company spokesman confirmed today. CNet News.com broke the story earlier today. The move, a potential boon for Intuit's Quicken software, follows Microsoft's move last year to discontinue sales of Money in retail boxes in favor of online downloads.

"Banks are offering a lot of these services directly, and it's unclear where the demand is for a single, integrated experience when a lot of financial institutions and investment firms allow you to do this already," said Adam Sohn, a marketing and communications director in Microsoft's online division. "We decided that it made the most sense for us to begin this decommission."

Sales will stop at the end of this month. Microsoft expects to notify customers of the plan over the next 24 hours. The company will offer customer support for Microsoft Money through January 2011.

"It's not an overnight thing," Sohn said. "There's still a lot of time for people to get value out of this product, but we think over the long term, this was the right thing to do for Microsoft and for the customer, based on what we're seeing and how the space is evolving."

Microsoft has been tightening its belt in the face of the difficult economy, and Money is just the latest product to be cut by the Redmond company. Microsoft earlier this year announced plans to discontinue its online Encarta encyclopedia. Late last year, Microsoft said it would discontinue its Windows Live OneCare product and offer a free anti-malware program instead.

Update, 5:45 p.m.: This just in from a Microsoft representative: "Microsoft is working with Intuit to help develop a file conversion process that will help Money customers more easily convert their existing data files to Quicken. Both Intuit and Microsoft hope this will be ready to go for the new release of Quicken this fall."

Follow-up: Intuit's Quicken prepares to embrace MS Money refugees.