Rent our place or sell and invest the money?

[Jennie Carolan]

Hi all! 

My fiance and I have been listening A LOT to the podcast. One of the main takeaways we learned is "owning a home to live in is not an investment, it is a luxury." A little background... we live in Orange Country and both work in LA. I am a teacher and my fiance is a firefighter. 

We want to achieve FIRE at a young age! If we sold, we could profit $400,000 and since we are getting married this year, we would not have to pay capital gains.

Our thoughts are to rent for awhile, invest the money in the Vanguard Mutual Fund, and buy some smaller investment properties. The smaller investment properties would allow us cash flow each month.

If we were to move out of our place, we could be rent for approx $3,500 a month. $1,600 a month would go to the mortgage (P&I), $500 a month would go to HOA, and $500 for property taxes (we live in CA). So in total we would be profiting approximately $900 a month.

Sorry this is a lot of information and very confusing! Main question... rent our place or sell and invest the money?