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Tips for Facebook millionaires

Congratulations, you're officially rich. But before you splurge on a winter getaway in Aspen or some sporty wheels, take a breath. CNET's Sumi Das speaks to a financial expert who says the best thing to do is follow three simple steps.

Jennifer Haley
Jen Haley is a senior producer at CNET in San Francisco where she directs the news video team. She was a business news producer at CNN in New York for more than a decade and received the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia Business School.
Jennifer Haley

Watch this: Tips for newly minted Facebook millionaires

It's estimated that the Facebook IPO will create 1,000 new millionaires -- granted that's a small, ok, miniscule percentage in the scheme of things -- but still, we thought it prudent to give some words of wisdom to those burgeoning fat cats.

We know that some Facebook employees had grand visions of rocketing into space on Virgin Galactic or excavating Mayan ruins with their new-found fortunes, but Bill Harris of PersonalCapital.com says that cooler heads must prevail.

"The biggest thing is to resist it becoming an emotional decision as opposed to analytical decision," he says.

In other words, cool your jets and think longer term.

Other words of wisdom come from Google's Sergey Brin -- don't be a showoff! If you buy a flashy car, don't park it front and center in the company lot. Remember, there are a lot of other employees who won't get a large slice of the IPO pie.