It’s everyone’s dream come true — coming into big money. However, a famous rapper once remarked that “mo’ money, mo’ problems.” They’re actually quite right — the more money you come into, the more headaches you will come into.

If you get an inheritance, you will have to pay taxes. It’s better to make sure that you have the taxes taken care of before everything else. It can be tempting to just ignore this point, but you’re actually going to be doing yourself a disservice. It’s just better to make sure that you can handle your finances from the start.

Be prepared for some big changes in your life, and not just from the money directly. You have a lot of decisions to make, and you need to make sure that you keep your head attached to your shoulders — the airy, giddy feeling that you get when you come into money can really make you feel like you’re drifting away from the world.

If you’re looking for a few constructive ways to use your money, we came up with a good guide to get you started.

First and foremost, you will want to gather the entire family and sit down for a long discussion. You want to make sure that money stays a tool in your life, and not a personal god. When you start turning money into an idol, bad things happen. The money is a great thing, but you don’t want to let it get to your head. That can make things strained between family members and even your friends. However, if you decide as a family how you will handle money, there’s no reason why things can’t just even out in good time.

When you sit down with the family, you will want to make sure that you let your family tell you how they want to handle requests for money, as well as any charities that they want to contribute to. If there’s something that everyone wants to do, you might want to go ahead and embrace that as well. You don’t just want to think that you won’t have requests for money — trust us, when people find out that you came into money, they will have plenty of places for you to store your money.

Speaking of places to store your money, you might be tempted just to put all of the money into the bank. That’s a good way for your money to be safe, but it won’t grow. Instead, the better option is to first talk with a financial adviser.

Now, we’ve written before on the power of hiring a financial advisor, but the truth is that hiring such a person to handle your financial affairs is a good thing. They can also be a stockbroker, which means that they can help you build an investment portfolio. You don’t want to skip over this step, because you have the right for your money to grow strong. Yes, there is a chance that your investments might go down in value, but generally speaking, the return on your investment is high enough that it warrants the risk. The market generally grows by 8 percent — through rain or shine. That’s pretty powerful. Your financial adviser can help you build a plan to protect your principal a bit more by choosing more conservative growth. Aggressive portfolios generally aren’t wise unless you know what you’re doing.

Now, this guide isn’t saying that you can’t think about nice things that you might want to own. However, it’s a lot smarter to think about the type of long term plans that you have for the moment. If you really do want to take that trip to the Mexican Rivera with 15 of your friends, that’s perfectly fine — just make sure that you’re actually able to pay for it first.

If there’s one area that you will want to take care of before you spend money on the fun stuff, you really need to make sure that you are paying of four debt. Clearing your debt will immediately bring a return on investment of your money. In addition, it’s important to ensure that you pay off your debts because you want to avoid being taken to court. It doesn’t give you as much time to challenge anything and actually negotiate to have the tradelines removed from your credit report – which raises your credit score. Just because you come into a windfall doesn’t mean that you should just skip over sound financial practice, you know!

As you can imagine, there really is a lot to think about when you come into a windfall of money. No matter the amount, putting the ideas in this guide to good use will help you come out on top in the end — get started today!