Forget a Kitchen-Aid mixer. Snoop Dogg surprised his daughter, Cori Broadus, with a $1 million gift ahead of her upcoming wedding, the rapper said during a recent appearance on “The Jennifer Hudson Show.”

Snoop Dogg explained how he would take advantage of the gift if the roles were reversed. “If it was me, my wedding would have been $100 [thousand], and $900 [thousand] would have went in my pocket,” he said.

Although a seven-figure wedding gift isn’t in the cards for most of us, Snoop Dogg’s suggestion for handling a financial windfall — spending 10% on fun and saving 90% for the future — checks out, financial experts say. 

“Snoop Dogg’s comment highlights the importance of prioritizing long-term financial stability over immediate gratification, which is solid advice,” says Maria Castillo Dominguez, a certified financial planner and founder of Valoria Wealth Management. 

That goes for anyone who comes into any unexpected sum of money, she says, no matter the size of the windfall. 

If you receive money unexpectedly, it can be tempting to envision yourself spending on a whole new lifestyle. In reality, you’d be better off putting money toward your long established goals, experts say.

So before you do anything with your money, experts advise that you first give yourself a moment.

“Take a pause before making any decisions,” says Catherine Valega, a CFP and founder of Green Bee Advisory. “Don’t do anything rash,” such as buying your “long-lost cousin a new car when they come out of the woodwork to ask for it,” if word gets around that you’ve come into extra cash.

Once you’ve composed yourself, Dominguez suggests asking yourself a simple question: What have I been wanting to do if I had more money? For many, it’s buying a home, paying off your mortgage, starting an emergency fund or getting out of credit card debt. 

By carefully thinking through your next steps, you can make the most of your extra money.

“Setting clear goals and even consulting a financial planner can help ensure the windfall works for you over the long term,” says Dominguez. With the right guidance, a windfall can be an opportunity to generate even more money for yourself and build happiness that lasts. 

A financial planner can take your specific situation and design an individualized plan for your extra cash. 

“Everybody should work with a financial planner,” says Valega. “We know how to prioritize your extra funds.”

Whether it’s in the form of a tax refund, a holiday bonus or an unexpected lottery jackpot, a windfall can provide a huge boost to our bottom line when we least expect it. And the ability to use that money to make a better life for yourself is cause for celebration, says Dominguez.

After you’ve identified your goals, using a portion of your extra money to treat yourself is within reason. Having a plan for your money can help make sure you keep your celebratory spending reasonable, she says. After all, treating yourself shouldn’t infringe on the success of your long-term plans. 

“It’s important to strike a balance,” Dominguez says. “Celebrating life’s milestones is valuable, but aligning spending with overall financial goals ensures sustainability.”

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If there’s one thing Terry Petzold knows about how to stand out in the job market and get hired, it’s that in-demand technical skills can come and go.

Petzold has 25 years of experience in recruiting and is currently a managing partner at Fox Search Group, an executive recruitment firm for tech leaders.

Take the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, for example. “Just two-and-a-half years ago, everyone was saying, ‘We need to hire coders,’” Petzold tells CNBC Make It.

“I was even talking to my own children about, ‘Oh, maybe we need to go the crowd coding route,’” he jokes. “Not six months later, ChatGPT comes out, and now coding is not the future.”

To be sure, having up-to-date digital skills is important for workers across industries and career levels, Petzold says. “If you’re in marketing, or if you’re in a warehouse, you need to understand technology.”

But because companies can train workers on learning developing tech to serve their business, Petzold says leaders are most interested in hiring people with a different set of skills.

“I’ll tell you where the future is,” he says. “It’s not even necessarily in technology space. It’s in soft skills. It’s in emotional intelligence — that is what we’re noticing is the future for talent.”

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is the ability to manage your own feelings and the feelings of those around you, which can make you better at building relationships and leading in the workplace.

For Petzold, job candidates with great technical skills really succeed when they can demonstrate high EQ.

It’s good to be specialized in an area of expertise, like data, security, infrastructure or enterprise solutions, for instance, “but it’s really those with strong EQ and those soft skills and business skills — those are the future IT leaders,” he says.

By hiring professionals with high EQ, Petzold says companies are really looking for people who can do crucial things like:

• Handle and deliver constructive feedback
• Manage conflict
• Have critical conversations with urgency
• Work cross-functionally by persuading peers and other leaders
• Effectively present ideas to leaders above them

“The general EQ skills we’re noticing really have to do with communication [with] others and the ability to push through challenges and come out unscathed,” Petzold says.

He adds that some companies are getting better at helping leaders develop stronger EQ skills, especially around managing effectively and navigating challenges or conflict.

Good employers can further develop their workers by offering mentorship programs and facilitating networking, Petzold adds, so people can see what good models of leadership and high EQ look like.

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Meredith Tabbone lives in Chicago, but for the last five years, she’s spent countless hours and nearly half a million dollars to build her dream home in Italy.

It all started in early 2019 when Tabbone learned about a town in Italy, Sambuca di Sicilia, that was auctioning off abandoned properties starting at 1 euro, or roughly $1.05.

At the same time, Tabbone, who works as a financial advisor, was deep into researching her family history. She had just traced her great-grandfather back to the same Sicilian town before he started a new life in America.

The coincidence was “too good to be true,” and she took it as a sign to place a bid.

A few months later, Tabbone became the owner of the 1-euro home. She also bought the building next door and got to work managing a local crew on the massive renovation.

Today, Tabbone, 45, uses her Sicily property as a vacation getaway, and she says it feels like a primary residence. The home includes two primary bedrooms, two guest bedrooms, a kitchen with modern finishes, a large dining room with a gallery wall of photography, a library, a living room, a dry-heat sauna and two terraces, including one with a pizza oven and outdoor dining area.

In all, she spent roughly $475,000 on her Italian dream home.

While bids for the Sicilian properties started at 1 euro, Tabbone placed a bid of 5,555 euros for her building. With taxes and fees, she spent 5,900 euros (roughly $6,200) to take ownership of the property.

She visited her new home for the first time in June 2019. The condition of the property was “dire at best,” Tabbone tells CNBC Make It: no electricity, no running water, asbestos in the roof and “probably two feet of pigeon poop on the floor.”

After seeing the space, she also bought the vacant home next door through a private sale with the owner for 22,000 euros (just over $23,000). 

Combining the two properties meant a bigger renovation budget: Tabbone initially planned to spend 40,000 euros to renovate 620 square feet, but that grew to 140,000 euros to cover 2,700 square feet.

By the end of her renovation in October 2023, she spent roughly 425,000 euros, or $446,000. Because the project was delayed by the pandemic and spread out over several years, she was able to pay for it all over time without taking out loans.

Tabbone’s goal with her Sicilian property was to build a vacation home where she could also host visiting friends and family.

To start, Tabbone’s renovation team made structural changes like breaking down several walls to open up common areas, leveling the floors across the two buildings, adding steel beams to protect against earthquakes, and adding two terraces.

It was Tabbone’s first renovation project ever. She was inspired by her father, who was an architect and died when she was 15. She now calls the home Casa dell’Architetto in his honor.

Tabbone says her vision was to design a space that is “simple, but significant,” in a nod to “Mad Men’” character Don Draper.

The finished project is “a thousand times better” than her original vision, she says. “It’s modern, but it’s still cozy. And it really showcases all of the best features that were already in the home,” like original archways, a trough in the kitchen and a unique staircase.

Now that her home is complete, Tabbone plans to spend four months out of the year in Sicily. She also uses it as a gathering space to host dinner parties with friends she’s made in Sambuca.

“It’s an amazing community” of expats and locals, she says.

Tabbone says her Sambuca property is more than a vacation spot. “What this home really means for me is a bridge between my past and my future,” she says. “It was a chance to really reconnect with my father’s lineage. But it also speaks to my future because it’s something that I’ve created for myself … where I can think more about enjoying my life and having a better work-life balance.”

Tabbone doesn’t plan to sell the house and has already promised it to a cousin if she passes away first. “After that, it’s going to be donated to the village,” Tabbone says.

Though Tabbone splurged on her home away from home, she says what she’s gained from the experience is invaluable.

“There’s a real sense of community here, so I definitely think people are very happy here,” she says. Plus, “I’ve started to think differently about how I’m building my business, and maybe not having the focus of my life be about work, [but] about just personal fulfillment in general,” she says.

Overall, she adds, she feels it’s “important to preserve old buildings like this” that can’t be recreated with modern materials or building sensibilities. “The attention to detail, the quality of the items, the ability for these buildings to last for centuries. It’s just not done anymore,” she says.

Conversions from EUR to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 EUR to 1.05 USD on Oct 18, 2023. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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Dr. Monisha Bhanote has nearly 30 years of experience in the field of health and wellness. As a longevity doctor and physician with a focus on cellular health, “which translates into the modern world of longevity,” Bhanote has plenty of knowledge about how to live a long, healthy life.

She explores many longevity practices in her book, “The Anatomy of Wellbeing.” An intentional lifestyle focused on improving health outcomes and optimizing wellbeing is “what I build my life around,” says Bhanote.

Here’s how she structures her life with longevity in mind.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNBC Make It: What are some of your practices for staying healthy?

It’s really taking a holistic approach to the body. Culinary nourishment, mindful movement, spending time focusing on brain health and neuroplasticity, and sleep optimization with truly restorative sleep.

That’s kind of what I build my life around, what I share when I’m working with patients [and] when I’m speaking at events. It’s really about this intentional lifestyle and being aware that we have the power to take care of our body, how we take care of our body, and how we could potentially prevent and reverse disease.

You touched on this a bit, but is there anything that you’re doing specifically for your brain?

Absolutely. There’s a couple of things that I do for my brain.

One is nutrition. Removing ultra-processed foods [from my diet], and I’ve done this for a long time. There’s a lot of food chemicals and additives, things that our body can’t break down and it creates inflammation. So one of the things I am very conscious of is the food that I put in my body.

I grow some of my own food. I have a hydroponic [garden] where I grow my own greens and herbs. I’ve got like five or six fruit trees that I can get some guavas off of, persimmons and even some herbal plants [like] moringa.

Then I’m making sure that [I’m] including practices that are going to improve my neuronal connections. So activities like mindfulness or meditation. I am a certified yoga and meditation teacher.

And also increasing fitness activity. Really being intentional [about] what type of movement I’m doing. What I was doing in my teens and my 20s, I’m not doing that anymore, because that’s not right for my body, but I’m consistently moving my body. One of my major physical activities is walking four or five miles a day.

How do you incorporate social activity and connecting with other people into your life?

My social fitness, a lot of it is actually virtual so I am probably on calls like half the day, and then I do travel quite a bit.

Almost once a month I’m speaking at an event, so connecting with people there and seeing what’s going on in other people’s lives, what’s going on in the world, and really taking this from a global perspective.

It’s great to be in-person, but sometimes you’re just not able to be. It’s a matter of picking up the phone and talking to somebody as opposed to just texting them.

What are some of the foods that you make sure to get in your diet regularly or even everyday?

I am plant-based, gluten-free unless I’m in Europe. When I’m traveling in regions like Europe or Asia, where food production often follows much higher standards and traditional methods, I don’t hesitate to enjoy gluten-containing foods.

In these areas, the quality and authenticity of ingredients make a noticeable difference, and I find they align better with my body’s ability to process them.

My focus is really getting the highest amount of phytonutrients [and] antioxidants in my food.

My diet really consists of food that is in season. Lots of soups and smoothies because that’s a great way for me to get a lot of nutrients at one time. I’m able to put in berries of all different colors and really eat the color of the rainbow, and also throw some greens in there. All foods with different colors have different compounds.

I eat a lot of salads. Most people are used to eating Iceberg lettuce with some tomatoes, maybe a cucumber. And I’m like, “Oh, I should show you my salad.”

My go-to salad is a reflection of the #CellCare philosophy, intentionally designed to provide a vibrant blend of phytonutrients, polyphenols, and essential nutrients that support cellular vitality. My salads include dark leafy greens like spinach or kale, and baked tofu or a serving of black beans for protein.

I mix in fresh, chopped mint and cilantro, which offer detoxifying and anti-inflammatory properties and a rainbow of crisp vegetables—including radishes, cucumbers, purple cabbage, and shredded carrots. I complement this with blueberries or pomegranates and a serving of avocado with a mix of sesame, hemp, and sunflower seeds.

Usually, my goal for every meal is to get 10 different fruits and vegetables in. Whether that’s a sandwich, a wrap, a salad, I’m looking at my plate, I’m seeing if it’s a rainbow of color. It’s not so much about quantity, it’s more about making sure I’m getting diversity. That diversity is focused on really protecting my gut microbiome.

This one is just a fun one. What are you currently reading?

I’m more of a podcast person or like listening to audiobooks. My latest audiobook that I’m in the middle of listening to is called The Energy Bus.

This book is really about how to manage relationships, how to manage your energy. We only have so much energy to do things. How do we address this, and how do we ultimately live our best life?

To sum up Bhanote’s behaviors for longevity, here’s what she does daily for her overall health and wellness:

• For her body: Healthy eating, mindful movement, brain-healthy activities, optimal sleep and social connections
• For brain health: No ultra-processed foods, eating mainly home-grown fruits and vegetables, meditating and walking four or five miles a day
• For social fitness: Connecting with people virtually multiple times a day, networking at speaking engagements
• For her daily diet: Plant-based, gluten-free foods that are the different colors of the rainbow. 10 different kinds of fruits and veggies in each meal
• For her media diet: Podcasts and audiobooks

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Before becoming a decades-long stable in hip-hop, R&B and pop music, Pharrell Williams was fired from three separate McDonald’s loctions. That didn’t stop the fast-food chain from calling on him when they needed a catchy jingle for their commercials.

“I thought it was ironic, and I thought it was very funny,” Williams, 51, said during an episode of First We Feast’s “Hot Ones” published in October. “They brought it to us and they asked us to make a song …. I didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got an idea for McDonald’s.’”

Originally, “I’m Lovin’ It” was originally developed by a German advertising agency called Heye & Partner. Then Williams and his former bandmate Chad Hugo were tapped to produce a new version. That version became the centerpiece of McDonald’s longest-running ad campaign.

Williams is often credited with making it a pop culture staple in the 2000s — alongside Justin Timberlake, who sang the tune and recorded a music video for it. The gig reportedly made Timberlake $6 million.

Williams, a 13-time Grammy winner, has stated that his shortcomings as a McDonald’s employee were mostly due to the fact that he wasn’t interested in the job.

“I was lazy for a reason, because I wasn’t inspired,” Williams told the Hollywood Reporter in September. “But when I got inspired, I’m now a workaholic, man.”

Doing work you don’t enjoy can lead to decreased motivation, reduced productivity, poor mental health, stress and an overall lack of fulfillment in life. Being uninspired at work is known as “burnout by boredom,” according to Emily Ballesteros, a burnout management coach,.

“If you told a person who feels burned out by boredom, ‘your life is going to look exactly like this a year from now,’ they would have a full-on meltdown, because they are that unsatisfied,” Ballesteros told CNBC Make It in 2021.

Williams chased his music dreams after he and his friend were discovered at a high school talent show by music producer Teddy Riley in his hometown of Virginia Beach. Not everyone gets so lucky, but Williams said that shouldn’t deter people from finding ways to pursue their industry of choice.

“Think about something that you love to do, so much so that if you could do it for the rest of your life and never make one penny from it, you would still do it as long as your bills could get paid,” Williams told the Hollywood Reporter.

“Let’s say that’s football, but you’re not in shape for football or you might be too small, or you might be too young — is there a job that you could do that’s connected to it? Maybe you could be a coach? Could you be a sports therapist?”

“If you could figure out a way that you can do a job connected to something that you love, you’ll love showing up every day,” Williams added. “That’s the key.”

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