Campus tours and car wrecks

On the off chance that I don't kill her before then, my daughter is on her way to college next year. So that means that we need to start planning now. We're scheduling campus tours, going to college fairs, getting "junk mail" by the dozens and even have an Army recruiter coming to the house to try and persuade us that the military is the way to go. Now I don't know what I'm doing. This being my first child to reach this point in life and the fact that I didn't attend college until well after I became an adult and was completely on my own as far as planning my future, all of this has left me less than confident that we are doing the right thing at the right time. I want her to be able to experience college in a way that I was never able to. I want her to be able to live in a dorm, far away from me, her sisters, her step dad and "the boyfriend". I want her to join a sorority and go to parties and make friends that will allow her networking opportunities well into her professional life. I want her to learn things and enjoy life and be prepared for whatever may come her way. All of this being said....how the heck am I supposed to pay for it all? I can barely pay the electric bill, the mortgage and put gas in all of the cars. Meanwhile, the one I'm spending so much time trying to figure out how I'm going to send off to college to experience all the wonders of it, is rear-ending folks in traffice driving up the cost of our insurance premiums. I keep hoping that if I can get her into the right college, majoring in the right thing that maybe, just maybe, she'll become a productive member of society and I may be able to lay down to rest at night without tossing and turning at the thought of her living with me and off me for the rest of her life! I hope it doesn't come to that but if I don't have a better feeling about all of this after our first campus tour next week, I may be jumping on board with the Army recruiter so that maybe her Uncle Sam can straighten things out!