California College Guide : It Won’t Be Cheap : Tuition: Financial adviser Percy Bolton tells his clients to plan early. Two parents and a student share their methods of paying for school.

The good news is Jessica has been accepted at Stanford.

The bad news is it’s going to cost you $20,000 a year to send her there.

For the next four or five years, forget about the Lexus, and plan to vacation in Europe only in your dreams. For all but the super-rich, having brilliant offspring is a sure-fire way to become nouveau poor.

According to the College Board Annual Survey, four years at a public college currently costs almost $40,000. Plan on twice that much for private colleges and universities. And the real cost is likely to be even higher since so many youngsters need five years to complete a baccalaureate program, in part because getting into required courses is a nightmare on many financially pressed campuses.

In planning for college, one truth is universally acknowledged: The time to start putting money away is as soon as the umbilical cord is cut.

According to Los Angeles financial planner Percy E. Bolton, the earlier you begin, the more options you have. Bolton, a fee-only adviser with offices in Century City, urges his mostly African-American clients to view planning for college as part of an integrated process that includes finding ways to achieve a comfortable retirement and other goals.

His first piece of advice is always the same: Start saving systematically. How you do it--by automatically investing in EE savings bonds, for instance, or by having money transferred each month from your checking account into a no-load mutual fund--is not terribly important. What matters most is making it a habit.

Bolton doesn’t emphasize products (such as stocks, mutual funds or annuities) when counseling clients. “You always look for techniques first, not products,” he advises. As a result, one of his clients decided to underwrite his son’s college education by hiring the youth to clean his office. The son’s salary is a legitimate business expense for the father. And the son is able to put $2,000 a year into an IRA, which grows tax-deferred. “It became his college fund,” Bolton said.

Where a child goes to college also has major financial consequences. “When clients say they want their child to go to Stanford or USC, we ask, ‘Why not UCLA or Berkeley?’ ” Bolton said. The two public campuses offer world-class educations at bargain prices to California residents.

Despite the number of fine institutions of higher learning in the state, many of Bolton’s clients want to send their children to historically black campuses, most of which are in the Southeast.

One such client is Rita (she asked that her last name not be used), 45, a single mother who lives in San Mateo. She began saving for daughter Belinda’s college education 10 years ago when she was divorced from Belinda’s father. Initially, Rita could only save $100 a month for Belinda, which Rita invested, with Bolton’s advice, as part of a diversified portfolio that included real-estate investment trusts (REITs) and no-load mutual funds.

Belinda, 20, had her heart set on Hampton University, a traditionally African-American campus in Virginia. Belinda wasn’t eligible for financial aid because Rita makes too much as a public health nurse ($60,000 a year).

But Belinda’s father helped foot the $10,000-a-year bill with EE savings bonds he had bought over the years through payroll deductions. Rita paid her share by refinancing to tap into the equity in her home. She also kept an eagle eye out for bargain air fares for Belinda’s cross-country travel, a cost of college most people never think about while planning. “I would pay very close attention to the specials and jump on them as much as six months ahead,” Rita said.

Belinda spent two years at Hampton, but she recently lost a beloved grandfather and has decided “to come home.” She plans to attend one of the California public colleges, where she will probably get a degree in nursing. Rita still has money left from her recent refinance and is confident she will be able to help Belinda continue her higher education.

Former San Fernando Valley resident Mark Bentkower is paying for college with an unusual financial aid program of his own design. Just as more and more couples are paying for their own weddings, Bentkower, 24, is paying for his own education.

A computer whiz, Bentkower began working full time in the computer industry while attending Los Angeles Valley College. But he longed for a richer undergraduate experience, including dorm life, especially after visiting friends who were living on college campuses elsewhere in the state.

He began making plans to attend UC Santa Cruz. He tailored his Valley course work to the university’s transfer requirements. Almost two years ago he took a job in Silicon Valley and began putting his highly personal college plan into action.

Through a friend in the computer industry, he learned that student loans are offered through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to employees of member companies and their children. So he founded a sideline personal computer consulting business and joined the Chamber. As a result, Bentkower, who started at Santa Cruz last fall, qualified for a loan of $11,100 for the current academic year. He paid off his credit-card debt of $9,000 and banked the rest.

His employer supports Bentkower’s desire to finish college and has agreed to let him at least try to work normal business hours while he attends school (he earns almost $40,000 a year). “I think they’re being extremely generous with their current offer,” he said of his employer.

He lives on campus and makes monthly payments for room, board and tuition of about $1,000. That’s more than the $775 he formerly paid for food, utilities and his share of a rented house, but, as he points out, it includes an education. If he cannot continue to juggle work and school successfully, he’ll quit his job and pay for school with loans and temporary work.

Although some might be daunted by being a full-time student and a full-time employee, Bentkower is happy to be going to college. “I feel like the hard part’s over,” he says. “Now all I have to do is go to class.”