Travel healthcare and house hacking---what would you do?

[Jonathan Steiger]

My fiance (25 F) and I (27 M) currently are traveling healthcare providers.  We have been doing this since I graduated in May of 2018.  We love seeing different parts of the country, that we may not have otherwise been able to visit if we were working regular jobs in one location.  Travel healthcare pays significantly more than a regular job would pay, as they are able to pay per diem money, which is non taxed money.  About 2/3 of our income is not taxed, which allows us to be in the 12% bracket.   If we were to quit travel healthcare, we would take roughly a 30% pay cut.  Long story short, we want to continue to travel for a few years after we get married (June of 2020) in order to pay off my student loans from grad school and to get ahead with investing.

We have a plan of getting started in real estate but are trying to figure out when the best time is for us to get started.  We know that everyone says the best time to get started is now.  We don't want to wait.  Over the past year or so we have talked about doing a house hack, most likely a duplex, for our first home.  We were always going to buy a duplex with 20% down after we were done traveling. 

Recently, we began to explore the idea of getting a newish duplex (20-25 years or newer) with an FHA loan before we were finished traveling . Of course we would use the BP calculator to analyze the deal, etc. Since it's an FHA, we would legally only be able to rent out one unit. We could have our half for when we come home between travel assignments, over the holidays, etc. It will also give us a place to store our new things that we get from our wedding registry. After we travel we can either live here for a while or move onto our next step, which may be a live in and flip, keeping the duplex to rent out both sides.

My question: Is it dumb to invest in a property that we can only rent out 1/2 units, while not being able to live in it?  Obviously we would also be paying rent for wherever we are traveling ($500-600/month) as well.  Should I run the numbers on the BP calculator as if we were only going to get half the rent? Is it better to get the duplex earlier rather than later down the road or should we wait until we can occupy half of the house once we are done traveling?  

Any input would be greatly appreciated, thanks!