I seem to strike readers' nerves whenever I write about options. Last month, I illustrated put writing as a means to buy gold futures on a dip below current market prices ("Post-Holiday Gold Sale"). I followed up with an update just this week as the highlighted options expired ("Remember That Gold Sale?").

Apparently, one reader thought the versatility of options was being, you should forgive me, oversold. "Ain't no free lunch," he sniffed.

Indeed, there is no free lunch with options, or any other investment vehicle for that matter. Each instrument or strategy conveys a unique assortment of risks and potential rewards. But successful investors, like successful mechanics, know the right tools to use for a given job.

Options are tools that seem to bedevil many investors. Perhaps it's because of their complexity. There is, after all, a lot of arcane jargon used to describe option behavior. Those Greek alphabetics - gamma, delta, theta and so on - well, they sometimes give option trading the look and feel of a calculus course.

The underlying principles of option trading, however, are fairly straightforward. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand option basics. And, you can learn all about options on the cheap, too. For free, actually.

The Options Industry Council, a marketing consortium of U.S.-based options exchanges, provides free classes and online education for investors. You can find an extensive menu of the organization's resources at the OIC Web portal, www.OptionsEducation.org, including a schedule of live seminars hosted in cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

I highly recommend the OIC's seminars. They're just one evening long and conducted by an experienced representative from one of the exchanges. You can start with the basic class and work your way up to more advanced topics. In addition to the live feedback you get in the seminar, there's an added benefit. Cookies. The OIC caters each event with cookies.

Now, I know that's not a free lunch. But it is a free snack.