NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - It's the largest single-winning lottery ticket ever: The winner of Wednesday's Powerball drawing in West Virginia has a claim on $314.9 million.

The winner, Andrew "Jack" Whittaker Jr. of West Virginia, has virtually unlimited options, having elected to take a one-time cash payout of $170 million, or roughly $112 million after-tax. The 55-year old construction-company owner could conceivably quit his job, travel the world, start a philanthropic foundation -- though his first impulse at a press conference Thursday was to help out recently laid off contract workers and to lend support to local pastors.

Even so, for Whittaker -- and for anybody who gets a big windfall -- a gigantic cash windfall is no picnic. In fact, it takes quite a bit of financial planning.

Here are two steps for anyone cashing in a big jackpot.

Go on! Pamper yourself a little. Buy the car, take a vacation. Maybe you want to pay off credit card debts or take care of some other pressing financial problem. But don't go out tomorrow and buy a yacht, says Scott Kahan, a certified financial planner in New York.

Take some time to adjust to your new-found wealth. Don't quit your job right away, and don't start writing checks to your Uncle Charlie and your neighbor down the street just yet, either.

Your first priority? Get some good professional advice, whether it's from a lawyer, an accountant or a financial planner who can help you design a smart strategy. (For more help on where to go to get financial advice, click here.)

"Typically when you have people with sudden wealth, they need a long-term plan to protect it from themselves," said Mark Groesbeck, a certified financial planner in Houston. "There's this initial pent-up desire to spend. Cars, houses, and gifts of money for so-and-so. Everyone is going to be your friend."

Take Curtis Sharp, who ran through nearly all of the $5.6 million he won in the New York Lottery in 1982. Sharp said his biggest mistake was listening to bad investment advice. It also didn't help that people were "coming out of the grave" with their hands out.

"I worked eight years after I won. Thank God I did," Sharp said.

Whittaker is luckier than most, of course. The $112 million he clears would earn about $2.2 million a year before taxes in a money market fund earning 2 percent.

Even better, if he invests the money in tax-free municipal bonds earning 4 percent, he'll have roughly $4.5 million a year -- and he won't have to pay Uncle Sam anything on the income.

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The question is whether he wants -- or needs -- any stock exposure. He may be comfortable keeping the cash in fixed income, or he may want to allocate a portion to stocks and other investments to grow the pot.

Groesbeck said the winner might want to put one-third of the cash in stocks, one-third in bonds and one-third in liquid assets such as money market funds.

In the stock portion, he could put 70 percent in large caps, and 30 percent in small caps, mixing in some growth and some value stocks. He may want to put a small portion -- say 10 percent or so -- in a riskier hedge fund.

Not exactly chump change, whatever he decides.