Have an 18 month old.  Need to start a college fund for him.

The wife has an appointment with her Edward Jones guy through work next week, said she'd bring it up to him then.  I'm not sure if that's where we need to focus or not.

I paid all of my college tuition with a credit card and some small grants, but that was 20 odd years ago.I imagine that wont be nearly as easy 17-18 years from now.

Where should we start?

Both you and your wife open a Roth IRA and fully fund every year. This can then be used for education health and home. There are probably other things it can be used for also. The benefit of this over a 529 is it can be used by more than one person, no penalty like with a 529 if your child does not go to school, if not used then you have started a retirement account.  I am not a financial advisor so ask the guy you will be working with. The 529 s I have looked at suck

ROTC

The dollar's days are near over.  If you want to "save" consider putting funds into precious metals that you physically possess.   If you're confident about the federal reserve note, look up Quantitative Easing. It has over quadrupled the supply of federal reserve notes from 2008 to present.  When the world dumps the federal reserve note as the world's reserve currency, the thing we call dollar dies.  Any savings, investment accounts or most stocks can die with it (the stock market has been one of the primary beneficiary of Quantitative Easing.  Once the Fed takes away the punch bowl, increase interest rates or the derivatives market crash, it's over).  To hedge against it, you save in precious metals.  You're not making money, just preserving it.  If your offspring decides to attend college, at least the funds won't have evaporated because of the crash.  

As for college, read this article.  There's a new class of indentured servants in this nation.  They're the college grads who owe $30-100k for their degree and can't get jobs because the jobs went overseas to Turd World Nations.  Read this article:  http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/35-shocking-facts-that-prove-that-college-education-has-become-a-giant-money-making-scam

You're seriously suggesting the OP store his children's college fund in gold and silver under his bed?

I would recommend against this approach OP. If we're ever in a situation where holding physical gold/silver is the only way to do business, than you'll probably be more concerned with finding enough food to put on the table than worrying about your child's college fund.

I think speaking with your financial advisor is the best bet. They understand your financial position and goals more than we do. We can provide some suggestions, but unless you want to divulge the contents of your account, debt, retirement goals, etc than we won't have nearly enough information to provide you with a reasonable recommendation.

Worst advice, ever.

Only if those kids are stupid, which granted a lot of them are.  I borrowed $24k for my undergrad.  It took me 8 years after I graduated to pay it off completely.  I am actually getting ready to graduate with a master's degree and I've paid the whole thing with cash and will graduate debt free.  Without my undergrad my career would not have been possible.  With my master's degree I'll be able to take my career to a new level and open more doors.  To say its a scam is pushing it.  I do think there are some worthless degrees, but I don't them as a scam.  It is simple economics of supply worthless degrees to people demanding them.  They are giving the customer what they want and that is what capitalism is all about.

While you're at it OP, tell your wife to move out of edward jones.

Kudos to you.  You choose wisely in your degree since they helped you advance in life.  However, your successful experience does not mean that it can be duplicated today.  Undergrad college was only $24k for you.  It was even cheaper back in my days and one  could flip a burger, pay for college and graduate debt free.  Tuition is higher for today's college aged adults and getting into debt to get a degree that doesn't have good prospect of employment only ensures a long period of indentured servitude.

Some degrees are worthless.  I used to see hundreds of kids graduate with art degrees.  Good for flipping burgers.  Political science, art history, any name-your-minority study, women studies, history, sociology, photography, business management (yeah, what businesses?  Small consumer driven businesses fold when there are no consumers), criminology (unless one is already in law enforcement and seeking promotion), economics, landscape architecture (and even architecture as it is consumer driven), law & paralegals (plenty of unemployed lawyers and paralegals right now), archaeology,  psychology (even the PhDs) are pretty worthless.  Journalism is sketchy too as newspapers fold in favor of the internet as a news source.  

Degrees like nursing (can't be outsourced), firefighting (required for some fire departments), vocational training like the blue collar trades and EMTs (A.S. degrees), medical doctors, pharmacology, veterinarian science, some engineering (so long as its not outsourced) stand a better chance of surviving in bad economic times.  Accounting can be outsourced, but it's a great degree if one is seeking employment with the FBI or IRS.

A reader of Benjamin Roth's book, The Great Depression:  A Diary, will learn that many professionally trained people were hard hit during the depression.  This includes lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects, teachers, etc.  In the U. S., Roth wrote about teachers who were not paid by their school districts.  In the hyper-inflation of Weimar Germany the farmer was better off than the professor.  No or few students meant extended leaves for professors.  It was no different in post WW I Austria (see Anna Eisenmenger's "Blockade:  An Austrian Housewife's Diary").