The safest, easiest and most disciplined way to invest in equities is through mutual funds. Not only do funds offer diversification but many will also waive initial investment minimums if you make automatic deposits every month, typically as little as $50 or $100. To avoid having any money siphoned off in commissions, stick with no-load funds like ones we name in this article.

--Don't neglect saving for retirement. Planning for your child's education should not sidetrack you from making regular contributions to your own 401(k), IRA or similar tax-deferred retirement account. You simply don't want to miss chance to make most of tax-deferred gains available in such accounts. And retirement assets won't affect your eligibility for federal need-based college financial aid.

--Don't invest in esoterica. From time to time, you may encounter sales pitches encouraging you to save for college with investments such as annuities or cash-value life insurance. Both defer taxes on your investment earnings but at price of costly withdrawal rules. Many deferred annuities, for example, charge penalties of 7% or more if you need to take out money within seven years of making your investment. Tempted to buy zero-coupon Treasury bonds, which recently yielded 6.6%? They can be fine investments--as long as you buy ones that will be redeemed when you need money. If you have to sell a zero before maturity, you may lose principal if interest rates have risen since you bought it. Prepaid-tuition plans, another way of building up college savings, can make sense if you're too nervous to invest in stocks (see box opposite).

--Don't put your money in your child's name if you hope to get financial aid. College financial aid formulas generally require a child to contribute 35% of his or her assets toward costs, but parents typically need to put up no more than 5.6% of their savings.

With those basic dos and don'ts at heart of your investment strategy, here are moves to make, based on your kid's age:

If your child is 13 or younger, you have enough time to weather any short-term stock market squalls. Investment strategists therefore recommend that you put 75% to 100% of your college savings in stock funds, depending on how much risk you can tolerate, and rest in such fixed-income investments as bonds and bond mutual funds. You might start your savings program with a fund that holds shares of large and mid-size companies with consistent earnings gains and strong growth potential. Financial planner Michael Zabalaoui at Resource Management in Metairie, La. suggests Oakmark (up an average of 25.13% annually for three years that ended June 30; 800-625-6275). Pearman recommends Vanguard Index Value (up 25.46%; 800-851-4999). Both funds seek out undervalued equities and bear below-average risk, according to fund ranker Morningstar.

After you have accumulated $5,000 in your starter portfolio, you can move as much as a third of your holdings into small-company and international stock funds, which offer prospect of juicier returns but also carry greater risk. For funds specializing in shares of small companies, Zabalaoui favors Berger Small Cap Value (up 22.6%; 800-333-1001). Among international funds, he likes Janus Worldwide (up 24.7%; 800-525-8983).

If your child is 14 or older, reduce risk to safeguard savings. Zabalaoui recommends getting at least 50% of your money out of stocks by end of your child's freshman year and moving all of your college savings for that child into short-term bonds, fixed income and cash by end of her sophomore year. To keep risk low, most investment experts prescribe short- and inter- mediate-term bond funds, which will add more pop to your total return than CDs or U.S. Savings Bonds. Pearman likes Vanguard Bond Index Intermediate-Term (up 8.62%; 800-851-4999). The fund shuns high-risk bonds and has an extremely low annual expense ratio of about 0.2% of principal, enabling more savings to go toward your child's college costs.

After losing trades, turtles would reduce effective equity, in order to scale back risk even further. Expand when you are winning, pull back when you are losing. But how did they know when to trade???

Entries. There were 2 breakout systems used by turtles. The first used a 20 day breakout. The second used a 55 day breakout. A 20 day breakout is where high or low exceeds high or low of preceding 20 days. They took trade when it was offered - i.e. this was not an 'end of day' system. If an opening gap caused breakout, turtles would still take trade, as idea was they would be in it for some days, and a couple of points at start didn't matter. Personally, (and everyone at www.traders101.com agrees!) we never chase gap. Obviously, turtles traded both long and short. There were a couple of extra rules, such as ignoring a signal if LAST breakout (whether turtle took it or not) would have led to a winner. The 55 day breakout would then become initiation point as a fail-safe on major moves. Full rules, are of course, available in free download.

Stops. Turtle traders ALWAYS used stops. They defined exit point BEFORE initiating a trade. Their positions could be so large that in order NOT to alert market, 'mental' stops were used. No trade could carry more than 2% risk. This means a stop would be 2 x N away from position.

Exits. Most breakouts do NOT result in trends. Most turtle trades, therefore, ended in losses. The winners therefore had to be BIG to cover losers, and they were. The first exit rule was to exit on a 10 day low or high against your position. The second method was an exit against a 20 day high or low. Simple, yes. But at time it worked. The HARD part for most traders is hanging on grimly as profits evaporate over 10 or 20 days! The cultivation of THAT discipline was real secret!

Does it still work? Sometimes. The market is well aware of legions of would-be turtles avidly watching for 20 day breakouts. 'Turtle Soup' is a common maneuver whereby a big player 'fakes' a move up or down to trigger turtle signals, then reverses it, stopping them out. Mean, ain't it? Bottom line, if you want to turtle trade, you need to adapt rules for your own personal style and hide your 'footprint' in market.