Cursed Words: The Word Game That Isn’t Direct Download
From letters to lunacy, Cursed Words is a roguelike chasing ever-stronger synergies. Start with simple words like BUY or THIS or GAME, then use game-altering combos to break the rules. Before long you’ll be ¼♖♙K5XNG the ⅗H♗4 out of these 83VK??7?!
WORDS ARE JUST THE START
Starts as Boggle, ends as Schrödinger – Cursed Words is a roguelike adventure about writing words… for a while…until words become NUM83R5, or ♔♘♙, or the infinite void.
Each run is shaped by four pillars: your Character, your Sticker upgrades, your Stamp loadout and the consumable Tiles you bring into each fight. Every attempt becomes its own cursed experiment.
BREAK THE RULES
In Cursed Words you build powerful synergies using Stamps and Stickers, face tricky boss encounters and push your score higher with every stage. A base level run features five stages, each one with two encounters and a boss. Beat Stage 5 to win the run, then take on special Challenges and Crown difficulty tiers that redefine the rules and push your creativity.
NO TWO RUNS ALIKE
Blaze a path through cursed bosses and uncover secret items and challenges that completely change the way the game is played. How about all consonants? Maybe all vowels? How about no letters at all?
A whopping 300 stickers and stamps to boost your scores and break the game Farmer’s Dynasty 2
11 characters with dramatically different playstyles
20 bosses that’ll try to sabotage your runs, or can be manipulated into multiplying your score even higher
26 unique challenges that completely change the rules of the game
UP TO THE CHALLENGE?
And if all that wasn’t enough, mastering each Character’s Pin and playstyle is only the beginning. You can prove it wasn’t just a fluke by taking on the Challenge Crowns, where Score Targets are bigger, Shops are more expensive, and you’ll have to really break the rules if you want to succeed; or you can take on Quests, specific modifiers to the game’s rules that will really put your skills to the test…
On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that’s a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we’ve gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2026 games that are launching this year.
Steam page Release: April 3 Developer: 伤官制作组 Team Uranian
Stiff Neck is a visual novel with a distinctive art style and an undertow of quiet psychological horror. It follows Noele, a small town cop with a big time neck problem. She’s currently dating Nil, a budding writer who lectures in experimental art, but a bunch of other could-be love interests enter the picture, all of whom could or could not be the mysterious “Flayer”. This drama takes place in a world that feels weirdly out-of-time, neither futuristic or contemporary: there’s a strike at a toy factory that precipitates a cursed doll plague, for example, and you’ve got an AI dog. This is definitely one for people who don’t mind reading a lot.
Steam page Release: April 3 Developer: Koksny.com
Here’s a life sim about a down-at-heel Polish fellow who’s just lost his job at the coal mine and is forced to work retail at “Poland’s landmark convenience store”. While the cashier life may be, on paper at least, easier than the mining life, it also pays a lot less: so while Kazio scans goods by day, by night he must make hard decisions about where his money will go. What’s more important? Food, rent, medicine, school or healing? There are a handful of different endings here, lots of different characters to meet (or fend off) at the checkout, and plenty of random events to mix things up.
Wasteland Bites
Wasteland Bites | Official Launch Trailer | FHD – YouTube
Steam page Release: April 4 Developer: CosmicDev
Keeping to the theme of retail work, Wasteland Bites is about operating a food truck in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Obviously, that would be hard: when you’re not cooking up some truly diabolical delicacies, you’re shooting aliens and mutants right in the face with your sawn-off. The objective is to get your food truck to a distant, near-mythical non-irradiated beach, but you’ll be shedding a lot of toxic blood enroute, and also cooking up some pretty disgusting kebabs.
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It Has My Face
It Has My Face – Official Version 1.0 Launch Trailer – YouTube
Steam page Release: April 4 Developers: NightByte Games
Previously known as DoubleWe, It Has My Face is a roguelike with whiffs of Among Us about it, but is presented in first-person, and seems a whole lot more blood thirsty. In a procedurally-generated hellscape you’re doomed to wander among crowds of fellow citizens in search of your doppelganger, who you must kill before they kill you. Into this mix is a big variety of bizarre modifiers and eldritch monstrosities to avoid. It can be played alone but its online multiplayer mode—which pits eight human doppelgangers against one another—sounds like loads of fun.
Steam page Release: April 1 Developer: Clover Bite
Here’s a sequel to the 2021 Souls-inflected metroidvania. Grimes 2 is definitely one for players who like a more combat-centric platformer, and it has a pretty neat twist in that department: as you defeat enemies you’ll be able to shape molds based on them, which can then become special attacks, or projectiles, or other combat aids. Aside from that, expect a parry-centric approach to hand-to-hand combat, lots of apocalyptic moseying around, and some very cinematic boss fights.
Astronaut eats: they’re not just Tang and Space Food Sticks these days. NASA shared a look at the menu for the Artemis II astronauts, and it doesn’t sound half bad.
The Artemis II crew will enjoy more than 10 types of beverages, including coffee, mango-peach smoothies, green tea, apple cider, lemonade, a pineapple drink, cocoa and breakfast drinks flavored in their choice of chocolate, vanilla or strawberry.
The most common food items they’ll eat include tortillas, wheat flat bread, vegetable quiche, barbecued beef brisket, mango salad, granola with blueberries, macaroni and cheese, tropical fruit salad, couscous with nuts, broccoli au gratin, spicy green beans, almonds, cashews, and butternut squash cauliflower.
NASA also reports that the astronauts can choose to spice up their meals — there are five different hot sauces available to the crew. And culinary flavorings available include maple syrup, chocolate spread, peanut butter, spicy mustard, strawberry jam, honey, cinnamon and almond butter. Sweet treats include cookies, chocolate, pudding, cake, candy-coated almonds and cobbler.
And, no, they’re not popping a flavor pill or sucking a sandwich out of a tube, like old sci-fi shows told us.
“Food aboard Orion is ready-to-eat, rehydratable, thermostabilized or irradiated,” NASA says. “The crew uses Orion’s potable water dispenser to rehydrate foods and beverages and a compact, briefcase-style food warmer to heat meals as needed.”
Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn creator Lucas Pope spoke about what he’s working on next—and why we’re not hearing about it more—on the latest episode of Mike & Rami Are Still Here, the podcast of Nuclear throne developer Rami Ismail and No More Robots founder Mike Rose.
Though Pope said he typically enjoys talking about his work, he thinks “the situation just feels different” in the industry. “You don’t really talk about stuff when you’re working on it,” said Pope. “It’s getting slurped up by AI or people are gonna copy it, or something else like that.
“It’s not a hard rule, but I’ve got a kinda feeling about that. I just don’t feel as comfortable talking about what I’m working on again.”
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Even with the radio silence, you might think that at least means he’s working on something—but it doesn’t mean the artist will ultimately decide to share it. “I was pretty happy with Obra Dinn and Papers, Please,” Pope said. “And maybe I can’t do it again? Maybe I just wanna go out on a high note. Why drag myself down with the next thing that people maybe won’t like.
“I feel lucky with those two games. And I can do the same things again—I can focus on narrative and gameplay and mechanics—but who knows. It could be a total miss. So in that sense, I don’t really wanna push my luck too much.”
Fair enough—two stone cold all-timers is more than most people can aspire to, and with Pope having published both hit games himself, he likely doesn’t face the same financial pressures as other developers. “I’m just finding the fun over here,” Pope said of the last six years of his game dev career, which included the Playdate-exclusive alien support group sim, Mars After Midnight. You can listen to Ismail and Rose’s full interview with Lucas Pope on episode 10 of Mike & Rami are Still Here.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
On paper, merging No Man’s Sky and Minecraft is an easy pitch. It’s no surprise, then, that a Kickstarter for a game doing just that has completely smashed its goals, earning over six times the original target.
The game is PlanetSmith, a sandbox RPG set on spherical planets that are procedurally generated. “Explore alien planets, build anything you can imagine, fight dangerous creatures, and seamlessly launch into space to continue your adventure across a living solar system,” reads the blurb.
The description goes on to point out that your excavating and exploration can “reshape entire landscapes.” The worlds are malleable to your desires, and they’ll change as you impact their makeup. Once you’re finished on one, you can hop back into your rocket to find another, with spacefaring similar to No Man’s Sky’s where you roam around until you find another ball of life that looks appealing.
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I Spent 5 Years Building a Voxel Survival Game Where the World Is a Planet – YouTube
Kenneth Ward is the main dev behind the game, operating under the pseudonym Incandescent Games having spent five years putting the project together so far. “The idea for PlanetSmith didn’t start with space,” he explains in a YouTube video.
“It actually started with something I found unsatisfying with Minecraft. I’ve always loved the feeling of exploring a new Minecraft world,” he continues. “Minecraft worlds are effectively infinite, which sounds great until you realize that exploring in one direction is basically no different than starting a brand new world.”
This led to the question: “What if a sandbox survival game took place on a real planet?” PlanetSmith is the result of that hypothesis, and having earned over £26,700, on a target of just £4,314, plenty are curious about the possibilities. The Kickstarter runs for 23 more days, and alpha access is due to begin this April. Keep an eye on the Steam page, if you’re keen.
Flip phone deals are pretty common for older phones, but it’s nice to see the latest models get some decent price drops from time to time. Right now, Best Buy is offering up to $400 off the price of the 2025 Motorola Razr Plus when buyers let the retailer activate the phone for them. Even if they elect to connect it to a carrier themselves, buyers can save a straight $300 on the phone, bringing the price down to just $700.
This deal is for the Pantone Mocha color of the phone, as well as for the 256GB storage version. It comes with a 6.9-inch interior pOLED display, a 4-inch outer display, and 16GB of RAM offering great performance and multi-tasking capabilities.
✅Recommended if: you’d like to get a newer flip phone but are looking for a chance to save some money on it; you’re looking for a phone that offers a full days’ worth of battery life, along with fast-charging, AI, and other modern features; you need a foldable phone with a highly functional cover screen, rather than one that just displays information.
❌Skip this deal if: you’d rather save even more money by going with an older-generation flip phone, such as the 2024 version of the Motorola Razr Plus; you’d rather go with a different brand, or you prefer a phone with a longer software update promise; you don’t need a foldable phone and you’d rather go with something closer to the economy-level side of the price point spectrum.
The 2025 Motorola Razr Plus is a polished, Snapdragon-backed foldable phone with a useful cover display, 16GB of RAM, and a powerful suite of cameras. While it doesn’t quite land on our best Motorola phones index, it’s close behind the larger sibling Razr Ultra, and it comes at a slightly more reasonable price.
While it’s a great phone, the Razr Plus does come at a fairly high cost, even with discounts like these. It also falls a little short in the update department, especially when compared with competitors from Samsung. Still, it’s not a bad pick for those who upgrade fairly often, and this is a very solid price for the 2025 model.
While the US and Anthropic are in the midst of a major dispute, the UK is trying to sway the San Francisco-based AI company to expand its presence on English soil. According to a report from The Financial Times, staffers at the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology have worked on proposals that include expanding Anthropic’s office in London, along with a potential dual stock listing.
The UK’s strategy follows a public fallout between Anthropic and the US Department of Defense earlier this year. After the AI company said it wouldn’t budge on certain AI guardrails, the Department of Defense pulled its contract and eventually designated Anthropic a supply chain risk. While the designation is currently temporarily blocked by a court-ordered injunction, the feud is far from over. In the meantime, the UK’s efforts to court Anthropic have ramped up in the recent weeks thanks to the company’s disagreements with the US, according to FT‘s sources.
With no end in sight for the debacle with the Department of Defense, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, is expected to visit the UK in May, according to FT. However, even in London, Anthropic will have to compete against OpenAI, which already committed to expanding its footprint in the English capital in February.
Artemis II and its four-person crew have entered the Moon’s “sphere of influence,” meaning the spacecraft is more affected by lunar gravity than the Earth’s pull. The transition occurred at a distance of 39,000 miles from the Moon, four days, six hours and two minutes into the mission. The next and most important phase will happen tomorrow when the craft loops around the Moon’s far side, taking humans deeper into space than they’ve ever been before.
At their apogee, Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen will be 252,757 miles from Earth. That will break the previous record held by the Apollo 13 crew by just over 4,000 miles. They’re the first humans to cross the lunar threshold since 1972’s Apollo 17 moon landing mission.
The crew spent this weekend carrying out preparations for their lunar flyby. That included manual piloting demonstrations, reviewing their science objectives for the six-hour observation period and evaluating their space suits, which are there for life support in the event of an emergency and for their return home. But, they’ve had plenty of time to take in the views, too — and those views sure are spectacular. In the latest series of images shared by the space agency, the astronauts are seen gazing at Earth through the windows of the Orion spacecraft.
Orion will reach the moon’s vicinity shortly after midnight on Monday, April 6. Later that day, the crew is expected to reach a point farther than any humans have traveled from Earth, surpassing the record of 248,655 miles from Earth set by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
Mission specialist Christina Koch takes in the view. (NASA)
The lunar observation period will start at 2:45PM ET, and a few hours later, they’ll be behind the moon and briefly drop out of communication. The spacecraft’s closest approach to the moon is expected to occur at 7:02PM, when it will be 4,066 miles from the surface. “From that distance, the crew will see the entire disk of the Moon at once, including regions near the north and south poles,” according to NASA. The crew will later get a chance to see a solar eclipse “as Orion, the Moon, and the Sun align in such a way that the astronauts will see our star disappear behind the Moon for about an hour.” NASA will have coverage of the flyby starting at 1PM ET.
Update April 7 at 1:40 AM ET: The post has been updated with news that Artemis II has entered the Moon’s sphere of influence.
Are your bills piling up more and more each month and you feel FRANTIC to find a way to just make ends meet? Shoot, you’d just settle for breaking even at this point. No need to get fancy, am I right?!
I know you’re stressed so I’ll cut to the chase! <3
I was $30k in debt, my ex-husband just left me for yet ANOTHER affair, I was living in a homeless shelter. I didn’t have anything! I take that back- I had $5 cash in my pocket. 😛
Today, I’m living a life that most dream of. My reality is the paid-for nice SUV, the big house, the savings account, freedom of time, I have it all, yes, as a STILL single mama. And today, I want to share with you HOW.
It wasn’t easy, but you need to know some things you don’t already know or aren’t practicing yet. These things will lead you from one end of the spectrum to the other!!!! It is the secret no one tells you about how to have more money!!!
The Secret No One Tells You About How To Have More Money
What if I could promise you that within 90 days from today, right this minute that you’re reading this post, you could have more money?!
What if I could PROMISE YOU, without a shadow of a doubt, that within 6 months, your financial picture could completely change for the better?
Would you be interested in hearing about it???
You CAN completely change EVERYTHING!!!
This is my promise to you, a big one I know. My promise is that if you do EVERYTHING I say in this post, you’ll have more money. In fact, you’ll have money coming out your EARS, that’s how much you’ll have.
Why?
Because God promises it. He loves us. He cares about us. He wants what’s best for us. He doesn’t WANT you to suffer day in and day out at that yucky job only to scrape by or not being able to afford to stay home with your kids because money is so tight.
He wants to overflow your buckets. And if you’re money buckets are not already overflowing, somewhere within this article (and probably a few) are the reasons why.
Number 1: You need to be saved
And before you decide you want to skip over this whole section, let me remind you that the Bible tells us that there are FEW legit Christians. That means that, yes, MOST people who SAY they are Christian, are NOT.
You can understand that. You see someone who says they are a believer and they do all SORTS of bad stuff. They don’t seem to care about God. They never change their life. It’s all about just going to church each Sunday, checking a little list off the to-do category and they think they are okay.
They’re not. And we can’t know who is who. It’s not our job to judge, but we CAN see fruit in the life of a Christian.
Those fruits are found in Galatians 5:22-23.
Are we patient and kind?
Do we seek our own revenge?
Do we pay evil for evil?
Do we lie and take advantage of people when they’re unaware?
Do we steal, even if it’s a “little” thing?
Now, let me be clear, Christians are NOT perfect, but they WILL be getting BETTER over time. As we line up our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ, our hearts become shaped in His image and we become better.
We stop seeking revenge when people hurt us.
We become patient, waiting even YEARS for our names to be cleared when wrongly accused.
We stop lying. Stop cussing. Stop doing bad things. We become better people.
My favorite saying is that we as Christians are not sinless, but we SIN…LESS the longer we ARE Christians.
So, are you a Christian? Are you a genuine believer? If you have any inkling of a doubt at ALL, examine yourself.
Why?
It’s important and you don’t wanna be wrong!!! Not with THIS!
My whole life I thought I was saved and it wasn’t until after I was in that homeless shelter (God had to bring me to the end of myself to get my attention) that I gave my life to God. And when I did, EVERYTHING changed. No longer did I desire to do certain things, participate in things that never bothered me before. I was a new creation.
If you can’t say the same….that you had an experience in your life where absolutely everything in your life changed all the sudden after giving your life to Christ, you need to examine yourself. Here’s the book (it’s now a free article online) I read that personally led me to genuinely giving my life to God all those years ago and helping me realize that I thought I was saved but really wasn’t.
Now, I hear you asking…
Doesn’t God care about those not saved? Doesn’t He bless them too?
Yes, God absolutely cares about EVERYONE. He died on the cross for everyone. He wishes that NONE would perish (2 Peter 3:9). The rain falls on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). However, He’s not under any obligation at ALL to take care of the wants and needs of those who are NOT His children.
Did you get that?
That means that if you ARE a genuine believer He PROMISES to take care of you.
Poof. Your bills are paid.
Poof, you regain control of your finances.
Poof, you’re a child of God.
Poof!
Does that mean you will always have your bills paid and everything is taken care of?
No. But it’s not because of GOD’S fault…it’s because of YOUR sin, which we’ll get into a little bit later. 🙂
Number 2: You need to be spirit-led and spirit-filled
After you’ve given your life to God, you are a new creation. No more are you dominated by your flesh. You now have the power, living inside of you, to abolish your fleshly desires and sin.
Problem is…many don’t do it.
They “flirt” with danger. They get right up to the line of going over and tell themselves they can handle it…
“It’s only ‘flirting’ with her. It’s not a big deal. I’m not lusting.”
“It’s only this one small little tiny white lie. Whose it really gonna harm?”
“Yeah, I steal postage stamps from my employer. Who doesn’t?!”
It’s those LITTLE things that add up. God says that if we cannot be trusted with little, we cannot be trusted with much.
I remember one time a local store gave me $5 too much in change. I didn’t pay attention, got home, and what do you do in that situation?
Pretend it’s you. Pretend that just happened. You’re tired. You were running errands all day. Your kids are screaming, dinner needs to be made, what do you do?
Or another time, I purchased 10 light bulb packages from Lowes and they shipped me 11 packages by mistake.
What do you do with that extra $10 box of light bulbs?
Keep it? After all, you’d use it, right?! They’re definitely the right ones you’ll use. Maybe you consider “stealing” in this case as a “blessing” from God to try to justify keeping them.
Listen, if you’re NOT faithful with what God gives you, He’s NOT going to give you more!
We MUST be a people who are faithful in everything. Every $5 extra He gives us! Truly. Because if we are not, He won’t bless us. No one who is of integrity will be turned away from the Lord. We must be a people of high integrity.
As little as it seems to worry about $5 or $10, it’s a massive deal to God.
Maybe He’s using that situation for you to show honesty to the worker at Lowes when you return it. Maybe He wants to use YOU, a feeble human as we all are, to be a witness for HIM. Maybe He will use that for HIS glory to show the world, there’s STILL some good in it.
How will you ever know, if you do not care about the things HE cares about?????
We must allow Him to lead us, guide us, and direct us. We are HIS children, bought with a price. We belong to Him. Every detail. Every hair on our head is HIS.
THAT’S what we signed up for when we gave our lives to Him!
The problem is that not many Christians are doing that. And so the world becomes dimmer every single day. We must be spirit-filled women with lights shining BRIGHT.
Number 3: You need to obey Him
I have seen, over time, God punish sin through finances. I feel like, from what I have personally seen, it seems like it’s His “go-to move”. It’s the first thing He hits to try to get our attention. To get us back to listening to Him. He punishes His children because He loves us. He wants a relationship with us. To be restored to Him, living with Him in light of His mercy and truth.
So we need to obey Him. Letting HIS light shine through us to a dying and depraved world. We must let HIM lead.
How do we let Him lead?
We obey Him.
We get to know His word inside and out. It’s a lifetime pursuit to seek first the kingdom of God, I assure you, but I also assure you that there is NO OTHER MORE WORTHY pursuit than to know your Maker!
Are you reading your Bible every single day? Do you make knowing Him, loving Him, fellowshipping with Him a massive priority in your life? Or does He get whatever’s left over? Or worse, just a Sunday church thing you check off your list to “stay on His good graces”.
Listen, God is not a vending machine. We can’t put in a dollar and get a soda. We can’t go to church and just get blessed. It’s not how it works.
When your children do the dishes and they do a really terrible job, there’s food guck all over, you make them redo it right? You don’t eat off of that, do you?!
In the same way WE, as parents, know when OUR children are not doing something with THEIR hearts, God knows when WE aren’t either.
We have to obey Him with our hearts, and in order to obey Him, we need to know WHAT we are to obey, am I right?!
Number 4: You need to give
If you got through all of that, I will lose a lot of people here. And I get it. “Why should I give? I’m hurting right now. I can’t afford my bills! What about ME?!”
Listen, I’m NOT saying to give 10%. That was the Old Testament stuff, which included government taxes and the government takes well above 10% from us now. Am I right?! 😛
So, the standard can’t POSSIBLY be 10%. Just on that notion alone.
The Bible doesn’t mandate us to give a certain amount. Again, God knows your heart. He doesn’t FORCE us to do ANYTHING. He WANTS us to WANT to.
When you ask your daughter to do dishes, if she scowls and complains, it hurts your heart. You think to yourself, “I sit here and work hard. I do so much for my kids. I provide for them. Help run this family and all I ask for is a little help because I can’t do it all by myself. That’s it. I’m not asking for the moon, here, just a little help.”
It hurts your heart, that she would not see and understand all you do for her. Yes, she’s a kid, you understand that, but you want her to obey you with her HEART.
When she doesn’t, it hurts you.
I will say this bluntly…we HURT GOD.
We hurt Him. He’s hurt. He gets hurt when we don’t obey Him with a cheerful attitude.
So if you give something, anything, with a bad attitude, like your daughter when doing dishes, it hurts Him.
He’s a loving, fair, and patient God, so He forgives us quickly and easily. But it still hurts Him.
If you really see, how much we all hurt Him every single day by the things we do, it’s rough. I see people hurt Him and it makes me sad. Knowing how GOOD He is to us. And we all do this. We all hurt Him.
We need to be giving people. Loving and generous. I don’t give free binders and printables and boatloads of stuff away for myself. I don’t do it to get an email address. Although that’s a good byproduct of it. I give because God so graciously gives to ME!
He’s made it so where I don’t have to punch in a clock every day on a timecard. I don’t have to leave my children with a stranger. I get to live in a really nice house. He gives me SO much, SOOOOOO SO much.
He’s way beyond generous to me. And I’m thankful. Out of that thankful heart of everything He does for me, I give.
I give my time on this blog. I donate funds to support the gospel of Christ. I give scholarships to my courses. I give a lot. Every day. I want my entire life to be a reflection, a mirror, of how much HE GIVES ME!
You don’t have to give 10%.
You don’t have to give a ton.
You don’t have to give it all away and become a pauper.
But you have to give.
Whether that’s time, your talents, your money, your resources. You need to be a giving and generous person. The more you are, the more you will receive.
Let me put it like this.
You want to have more money, right? You want to receive money.
Let’s do a little exercise together, you game?
Put out your fist in front of you. Outstretch your arm completely and fully with a fist. This is what you’re doing now when you are NOT giving. You are holding out your fist. A closed palm.
Now, open your hand, palm up, as if you have a treat in your hand and going to let your puppy dog lick it out of your hand. You are GIVING him a treat. You’re giving.
If I try to give you money, and your hand is closed, in a fist, you cannot take the money I want to give you, can you? The money will just fall to the floor. You cannot receive anything. How can you? Your hand is closed.
But if I try to give you money and your hand is open, as if giving, you CAN receive.
Now, ask yourself, is your hand open or closed? Are you a giving, super generous person or tight-fisted?
If you want God to give to YOU, you must be generous to everyone else around you and I add…WITH the right heart motive. Not demanding anything in return, but giving out of thankfulness of what the Lord your God has done for you.
And if you’re not sure WHAT to give, pray about it. Seek His will and ask Him what He wants you to give. He’s not a silent God! He will show you what He wants from you when you ask and seek to line your desires up to His. 🙂
Number 5: You need to ask Him to use you
There are two types of people in the world.
Are you a giver or a taker? Do you give your emotions, your time, your heart, your soul to those around you? Or do you TAKE? Leech on those around you.
Are you making it a point, every day to wake up renewed in your sleep, thanking God for the day, and asking Him to use you that day?
There is so little precious time here on earth. Every day, every minute counts for His glory. Are we using our time to further His kingdom? To be used by Him? To pour out of us, His love, His gentleness, His beauty and kindness?
Or is the day all about US?
Our selfish little kingdom we have created for ourselves.
If you want to be blessed financially, your life needs to line up to His will. You need to see things from HIS perspective and live in light of that. You need to do more for HIM and less for yourself (John 3:30). We need to keep our gaze on our loving, Heavenly Father and NOT on ourselves, as the world would tell us to do.
What is important to Him, should be important to us. Do you know what IS important to Him?
People.
People are His treasure.
And yet we treat everyone as if they are a plague, a burden. We have our own little worlds and whoever disagrees with us, we throw them out of it. 🙁
Do you realize that how you treat other people is a direct correlation to how you treat GOD?
How do you treat your husband? Your kids? Your neighbor? Your employer?
That is how you are treating God at the moment.
If you treat your employer with contempt, you are treating God with contempt.
If you are constantly seeking revenge on other people, you are seeking revenge on God.
If you are bitter towards your husband, you are bitter toward God.
He created those people around you and whether they are saved or not, He loves them very much, again, wishing none would perish.
Do we see other people as He does? Or as a nuisance?
Listen, it’s a struggle for everyone. There’s always going to be that ONE person you just wanna slap. haha. I get it. But we have to take care of how we treat other people. Are we seeking to be used by Him TO those people?
I feel like the more we treat HIS TRUE TREASURE (people) the way He would treat them, the more we are good stewards of whatever people He gives us in our life to lead (whether that’s your Sunday school class, your blog audience, your husband, or your littles at home looking to you for guidance and daily care), the more we treat them wisely (as good stewards of them, their money- not leading them into debt,etc., their hearts, etc.) the more He will financially bless us.
But the first “test” of having more money, is first, treating the PEOPLE in our lives how He would treat them. If we are not, He’s not going to increase our finances because we have been given a GREAT GIFT of stewardship already and are not spending THAT wisely, why give us more money?! Money is just an outer expression of the stewardship we are or are not being faithful with.
So when God looks to bless us, He’s not just looking at our stewardship of financial resources, but what are we doing with the PEOPLE in our lives too. What are we doing with EVERYTHING that He’s already given us?
Is your home clean? Are you managing your home well? He gave you that home.
Are you shepherding your children’s hearts? That’s stewardship too.
What about your blog? Are you blogging in a way that honors Him? Are you a Christian blogger but seriously NO ONE in the world knows you’re a Christian? You blog on other material and that’s fine and dandy, but it’s all for YOU.
When David built his temples (homes), he wanted his own home AND a home for God (2 Samuel 7:1-2). I think that in our society today, we so often build only a home for ourselves and we never think to build a “home” for God.
What does that mean? Well, if you are a genuine believer and you never talk about God in your blog or business, what an utter SHAME!
To have a home for yourself, and nothing for God. What a shame to steward that blog or business without even using what you have been given by God, for God. It saddens me and I know many genuine believers who do that. If you’re one of them, pray about it! Pray how you can use your blog for not only YOUR glory (!!!!), YOUR bills, YOUR life, but HIS glory!!!!
We are NOT put on this earth to pay our bills and die, loved ones. We are here to MAGNIFY the name of Jesus Christ BOLDLY to the WORLD!!!! Are you doing that? Are we doing that?
Being used by God means, being willing to put Him (and keep Him) in EVERY aspect of our lives.
Number 6: You need to ask Him for what you want
It may sound completely crazy but many people forget to ask God for exactly what they want. They may “think” it or dream it but they don’t go to the Source of all things and ASK. The Bible says knock and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7). Does that mean we can ask for an elephant in our living room and He will just magically put one there? No (although He has the power to do it, I assure you!)
It just means that we don’t ask Him for the things we want and yes, even need. In the Lord’s Prayer it talks about giving us daily provisions (Matthew 6:11). If that prayer is how we should pray, a model of prayer, it is talking about asking for our daily needs.
Yes, God KNOWS our needs before we even ask them. In fact, He knows of our needs before He created the foundation of the earth, but we should still pray them. He wants us involved in this relationship with Him. He’s not far apart, somewhere far away from us, looking down on us. He’s WITH us, walking with us. What a glorious thing that is to walk along side of Jesus as He leads, guides, and directs our hearts.
When you’re praying, ask for the things you need. Ask Him to give you enough to pay all your bills. Do not ask for a ton. Just ask for enough. Then, ask Him to help you prove that you can be trusted to spend your money wisely. Because if you are NOT spending wisely what you currently have, He won’t give you more. So, when you prove to Him that you CAN spend what you have NOW, in a wise manner, He will give more.
After the first month, you are spending things wisely, ask Him for a little bit more. It may take a couple months for you to prove you can spend what He gives you wisely and it depends on where you are in your finances, but this is how my own walk went when I became a Christian after being homeless…
I prayed that He would just pay my bills each month. Help provide for me so that I could break even.
A few months later, I prayed He would give me $100 extra/month in order to have a cushion.
A month later, I asked for $200/month extra.
Then, $300 extra/month.
Next, I prayed to have $500 in my savings account.
Then, $700 in my savings account.
Then, I prayed for $1,000 in my savings account.
I was doing pretty well for myself. I had $1,000 in savings and all my bills were paid for each month with around $200-$300 extra, over bills (and over the $1k I had in savings).
And I just kept on praying for more and more as time went on.
Steadily, over time, as I have spent what He gives me in a wise way, constantly being generous, constantly striving to be all the things in this post that have been discussed, constantly wanting my life to matter for Him, seeking first His kingdom, He gave more and more because of His great kindness, love, and mercy.
I started a blog to be used by Him more. I started making money from the blog. Then I started making more. 13 years later, from the time I was homeless to a year ago, I purchased a stunningly beautiful home that I don’t deserve but God richly gives me.
Buying such a large home in such a nice neighborhood and having such incredible wealth, still as a single mom (!!!!), has been surreal. It’s been over a year since I bought this place and I can’t say that I’m used to it by now. That there’s not a piece of me that thinks, I’ll lose it somehow. What did I do to deserve such a fantastic home?! A fantastic life.
And I’m not done decorating. It’s HARD to be patient. I just want it all decorated now but it takes a LONG time, to save money, resell all previous things that don’t fit in with the new home/decor, find amazing deals on what I want to buy (think: Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist). It’s a process. It’s not all furnished yet. Still a couple rooms are bare. Most rooms not done yet. I’m taking it slow. But it’s more important that I spend the money wisely to decorate this amazing gift, rather than just blow it all and spend poorly.
I’m very appreciative of what He’s done in my life and how He’s decided to bless me.
It DIDN’T come overnight. It didn’t happen in the blink of an eye. But AS I’ve been faithful to God, faithful to His word, doing all the things I am supposed to be doing (trying my absolute best!), He blesses.
I’m living proof that God can take ANYONE from having NOTHING, being in debt $30k and being homeless to having more than you could ever dream of. It’s a testament to His glory. To His generosity as we faithfully obey.
He wants to bless us.
He wants to give us an abundance of things but He needs to know that we can handle them. Are we stewarding what we have now properly and righteously? Wealth, fame, and success are a massive test of our personal character. If He DOES give you more, will you blow it?!
We have to prove ourselves.
Not for His knowledge because He already knows whether we’d pass the test or not, but for our OWN knowledge and so that we never take for granted what He gives us!
If He would have given me this home when I first started, I can bet you I would have lost it. I would have taken it for granted. I would have blown it. But, after having worked hard and consistently for 13 years, to get to where I am today, I won’t blow it because I’ve put in all that time and energy to make me and my children’s lives better. It is me doing what I’m supposed to do and Him blessing that. It’s a team effort.
I can’t have this without Him. And without me, He won’t give it because He wants us to obey, to be generous, to live our life for HIM, to not be lazy.
Our focus has to be on HIM, not on worldly treasures (Matthew 6:33). Not on this earth, but on Him. I have to say that, now having so much, that is always a temptation. To take my eyes off God and say, “I DID this. It was me. Look how great I am.” But it wasn’t. It never was. It’s ONLY through the grace of God I have this. And I’m not saying follow all these things and He’ll make you a millionaire. I’m saying that He WILL bless you far more than you think WHEN you obey Him. When you line your life up to HIS glory instead of your own.
Whatever we have is because of Him and we can’t forget it. Because it takes so long to get from one point to another, because of the hard work put in to receive it, we DON’T forget!
He is not against us having nice things. He is not sitting there in Heaven wanting you to suffer. He wants you to have treasures and nice things on earth. But He wants you to have them in perspective. We cannot LOVE those things so much that we put them above Him and His grace. He is to be first in our lives.
All of these things shared in this post aren’t to be taken as a recipe to get what you want. It’s to be taken as a way to live up to the life your Savior has called you to live and as a byproduct of a heart on fire for Him, obeying Him in all He asks, He WILL reward you openly. So that you TOO can have a story like mine. All the treasures and things God gives you, to be thankful of and to be used for the edification of others.
He wants to put His GOODNESS on display to the world. But when you get what you want, if you don’t give Him the proper credit HE deserves for giving it to you, He WILL take it all away. You can be sure of that.
So, that is the last point. After you get it, no matter how long it takes you to go from your own point A to point B, whatever journey that is for you, constantly acknowledge that He alone is in charge of your life, He alone gives, He alone is the reason you have, and never forget His goodness and never deny an opportunity to give Him glory, both publicly and privately to your family and friends.
If you follow ALL of these things within this post, you will see your finances taken care of. You will fly to the highest of heights that you never thought possible, all according to whatever His specific will is for YOU.
But be sure whatever you do next, whether you’re adding a new income stream, taking another job, or learning to save money to keep what you currently have from flying out the window, that you have ALL these things in practice or you’ll just end up spinning your wheels!
Rising RAM prices have made upgrading your PC more expensive.
Virtual RAM is a less expensive way of boosting an older computer’s performance.
Virtual RAM has limited use cases because it can’t match the speed of physical RAM.
It’s been a rough seven months or so for shoppers. Prices for RAM and PCs have surged to record levels, fueled in part by the rise of generative AI and broader economic turmoil. Because of the price shifts, upgrading your old computer — or buying a new system — is now more expensive than ever. There is some good news. RAM prices have recently started to drop, but only slightly; memory and hardware remain very expensive.
Affordability remains a major problem, though there is a solution, albeit a limited one: virtual RAM. Also known as virtual memory, this resource management feature allows PC owners to use a portion of their device’s storage drive as an extension of system memory. As Lenovo explains, “it creates the illusion of a larger, continuous memory space”, as if your computer has access to more resources.
It’s a neat way to stretch your computer’s memory past its limits. However, it comes with important caveats. Virtual RAM is only a temporary solution for enhancing PCs with limited memory, not an outright replacement for physical RAM.
Why is virtual memory not a true RAM alternative?
Virtual RAM just can’t perform as well as physical RAM. It trades speed and responsiveness for extra resources. PC gaming brand Corsair makes this point, stating that even the fastest SSDs are “almost 10 times slower than RAM, and a hard drive is hundreds of times slower.” Remember: RAM is designed for high-speed, temporary storage of active data, while SSDs and hard drives are built for long-term storage.
To put this into perspective, let’s look at a real-world example using my PC and compare the speed of my 32GB of DDR4 RAM to the speed of my PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.
You can find the theoretical maximum bandwidth of your memory by multiplying the MT/s value by the number of bytes sent per transfer.
My desktop’s RAM runs at 2400 MT/s (megatransfers per second) and has two 64-bit channels (8 bytes). So, 2,400 MT/s × 8 bytes equals 19,200 MB/s (megabytes per second).
Compare that to the speed of my SSD. Using CrystalDiskMark, I measured its read speeds of ~6,700 MB/s and write speeds of ~6,200 MB/s. That’s less than one-third of the speed.
Even with a high-end SSD, the speed difference between my RAM and storage drive is significant. My DDR4 RAM can hit 19,200 MB/s, while the SSD peaks at 6,700 MB/s. Virtual RAM on my PC will be slower, have higher latency, and be less responsive overall.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
There’s also the problem of memory thrashing. Thrashing occurs when a computer spends more time moving data between the RAM and the storage drive, which can result in freezing, heavy lag, and poor performance. Lenovo, in another post, states that certain memory management techniques, such as page replacement algorithms, can lower the likelihood of thrashing, but nothing is perfect.
Where does virtual RAM help?
Although I’ve focused so far on the limitations of virtual RAM, virtual memory can be a genuinely helpful tool in the right circumstances. The key is using it responsibly. I recommend using virtual RAM to temporarily boost the performance of lightweight machines.
Low-cost laptops don’t often have a lot of memory to spare, so resources can be quickly exhausted. In such situations, virtual memory can help a system run smoothly, prevent crashes, and improve overall stability.
A good example of a device that can benefit from virtual memory is the Acer Aspire Go 15, a laptop we often recommend for its affordability. At the time of this writing, it’s on sale for $275. That low price comes at the cost of performance. It only possesses 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, which is quite low by today’s standards.
Activating virtual RAM in a case like this won’t turn the laptop into a high-powered machine, but it would allow the Aspire Go 15 to better handle more tasks without slowing down or crashing.
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET
How to activate virtual RAM in Windows 11
If you want to enable virtual RAM in Windows 11, the process is fairly straightforward. Start by typing “View advanced system settings” into the Windows 11 search bar and clicking the first entry you see. This will launch the System Properties window.
From here, go to “Advanced” > click “Settings” under the “Performance” section > “Advanced” again in the new window > Click “Change” under the Virtual Memory section. Uncheck the box at the top labeled “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives,” as seen in the image below.
Screenshot by Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET
To establish virtual memory, you will need to choose a drive to use. In this scenario, my PC only has a C: drive, so that’s my only choice. If your computer has multiple drives, use whichever is fastest. Next, select “Custom size” to allocate a specific amount of drive space for virtual memory, measured in MB. As a rule of thumb, 1,000 MB is about 1 GB. Windows will provide a recommended value, such as 5,000 MB. For my needs, I will allocate 8,000 MB (or 8 GB).
When it comes to the maximum size, online forums suggest setting it to three times the initial size, which in this instance is 24,000 MB (24 GB). Once done, click “Set”, then click “Ok” > “Ok” on the following page, then restart your computer to apply the changes.
When you’re done using virtual memory, return to the same Virtual Memory window and re-check “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” at the top.
Can you disable virtual memory entirely?
It’s possible to disable virtual memory by selecting “No paging filing” in the System Properties window, then clicking “Set”, but it’s not generally recommended. As Lenovo points out, PCs rely on the interaction between physical and virtual memory. Disabling virtual memory will lead to all sorts of performance issues.
Do Apple computers have virtual memory?
Yes, but it behaves differently from Windows PCs. Apple states that MacOS uses “secure virtual memory”. It functions like Windows virtual memory, temporarily moving data from RAM to the hard drive when physical memory is limited. The major difference is that secure virtual memory is encrypted. It can’t be increased or decreased.