Here's a question that's as pleasant to consider as a fraternity hazing: How will you come up with money to send your child to campus of his or her choice? If you're like most Americans, your answer is probably loans--unless you start saving and investing more effectively. According to a recent MONEY poll, fully 87% of U.S. moms and dads expect their kids to go to college. But nearly half of them, 47%, have not yet stashed away any money to cover costs, which currently run an average of $7,118 a year for tuition, fees, room and board at four-year public schools and $18,184 at private universities, according to College Board. And at current growth rate of 5% a year, cost of a four-year degree is projected to rise to $73,834 (public) and $188,620 (private) for a child born in 1997.

The survey of 1,118 adults with children, conducted by ICR of Media, Pa. (margin of error: plus or minus 2.9 percentage points), also provides a wake-up call for parents who say they are saving for their kids' college costs. More than half stash their savings in unwise college investments, such as certificates of deposit. And nearly a quarter of parents who are saving are putting away a paltry $500 or less a year for each child.

Yes, your child can lessen your burden by working part time and by pursuing scholarships (see "Strategies That Can Cut Costs 30% or More" on page 126). But financial experts say that average parent should be prepared to pick up at least a third of total college costs.

If your child is in high school and you haven't saved enough, check out our advice on page 138 on borrowing for college. If your children are younger, however, sooner you start to save, better. For example, Richard and Deborah Winters of Milford, Conn. (pictured at left) began putting away col- lege money for son Kyle, 4, when he was six months old and for daughter Kar- lie, 2, when she was 1 1/2. Oakland registered nurse Iris Winn (pictured on page 139), a late starter, now stashes a whopping $12,000 of her $70,000 annual salary into college savings for her daughter Monique, 15.

But whenever you start your savings regimen, you can maximize your dollars by planning and investing wisely. Later in this article, we suggest investment strategies for families with college-bound children. But before you get to specific advice, study these basic rules--the dos and don'ts of smart invest- ing for college:

--Do set family goals. You must first figure out how much you need to carve out of today's spending for tomorrow's college costs. To do this, you can use savings calculators included in popular software such as Quicken, online services like MONEY's college savings calculator (http://www.pathfinder .com/cgi-bin/Money/collsave.cgi) or free worksheets offered by brokerages and mutual fund companies, including Charles Schwab (800-435-4000) and Fidelity (800-544-8888).

"Parents and children should work together to make sure they are focused on same goal," says James Pearman of Fee-Only Financial Planning in Roanoke. "That way, you can face tough questions early on--for example, what to do if you are planning to pay for 75% of tuition at an in-state public school and your child wants to go to Harvard."

--Do start saving early. Every year, as your investment principal grows, so do earnings on your money. The lesson is simple: Don't put off investing.

There are many websites offering courses in how to turtle trade, sometimes for thousands of dollars, some of them even run by people who are allegedly 'ex-turtles'. This is frankly hilarious - entire turtle system is available for free as a PDF download from www.originalTurtles.org and we here at www.traders101.com STRONGLY advise you to grab it and read it before you lash out any cash on a 'course'. As far as we know, there is NOTHING to be learned from these expensive 'courses' that you can't find for free in excellent download, written by real Turtle traders who were trained by great man himself.

In order to help you decide whether turtle trading is for you, here's a quick overview. First off, in 1983 when Dennis tried scheme, it worked. It worked BIG TIME in fact, producing an AVERAGE 80% compounded over four years of trial. The turtle trading rules themselves were simple - secret was ability to STICK TO THE RULES!. This made it a mechanical trading system par excellence, and a good mechanical trading system, as you should know, is key to consistency.

The turtle trading rules specified in detail what markets to trade, how to size a position properly, when to enter and exit, how to use stops to exit a losing position, how to exit a winning position, and some ancillary tactics on buying and selling of large positions without alerting market.

What to trade. The turtles traded futures (commodities, as they were known at time). They traded all liquid futures markets except grains and meats. That included T Bonds, coffee, sugar, cotton, currencies, precious metals and oils. An individual trader could decide what he wanted to trade.

Position Sizing. The turtles liked to normalize their positions based on underlying dollar volatility of market - a common trick nowadays, but advanced for 80s. This made effective risk across markets similar, and allowed them to trade many markets in a similar way. Key to this is 'N' - underlying volatility of a market. To calculate N, find 20 day exponential MA of ATR (true range). There's a lot on Moving Averages over at www.traders101.com if you need a refresher. Having found N, 'Dollar Volatility' is N x Dollars Per point. The S&P, for example, moves 50 bucks a point on emini contract.