The summer holidays and recent wave of glorious weather mean a lot of people are looking to spend time away with their families, often for the first time in many months due to Covid restrictions.
You might want a beach break in Brighton or a sunny stay in Spain, or maybe a year ago you booked a week in Wales with the family and have had to keep pushing back the dates as lockdowns come and go.
But what if the Department for Work and Pensions schedules your next in-person universal credit meeting for slap bang in the middle of your long-planned holiday?
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An estimated 5.5 million households receive universal credit payments, and many of those people are working at the same time. Over a third of the 170,000 people receiving the benefit in Liverpool last December were in work, relying on the payment to top up low wages.
Many people will be wondering if they'll be punished financially by the government department if they take off for a well earned break.
Luckily, you can travel within the country with no sanctions, and you can continue claiming a range of benefits, including universal credit, if you leave the UK temporarily for up to a month.
Only your retirement allowance or industrial death and injury disablement benefits won't be affected by you going abroad.
But there is a catch for people on universal credit and other payments.
While you're unlikely to lose out if you leave for a short trip or medical treatment, or you live and go overseas with a member of the armed forces, you will otherwise have to stick to some obligations.
You must alert your work coach at the local Jobcentre as soon as you plan to go abroad, and you will have to keep with the commitments required as part of receiving universal credit payments.
That means you will either have to re-arrange your in-person review meeting with your work coach or have one over the phone if the timing clashes with your planned trip away.
You won't get a break from updating your income and expenses for that month either. And you'll have to keep applying for work if that is part of your commitment, as many people are required to treat job hunting like a full-time job in itself.
Just remember to check in with your work coach to see if your eligibility for receiving benefit payments will be affected by a trip down the country or overseas.
They will tell you if you can still met your commitments while taking a breather in the breeze on a beach.
