That's before you pay any debt service.To answer your question: No, it's generally not a good idea to lose a bunch of money every month.

An NFL player at 250 lbs is going to be a different fitness level than couch potato that weighs 250 lbs.

Why would you literally wait until the last minute, when a flat tire or difficulty finding a parking space be the difference between keeping and losing your home?

Your income isn't high enough for it to make sense as a rental and the closer you get to your residence limit the greater pressure you will have to sell it before losing your exclusion in whole or part. 500k right now can make $15k per year income with zero maintenance or tenant risks. 

You are losing money on both properties. 

If there's any equity there and they can't pay the mortgage they are going to eventually lose the house anyway. 

If you just want to build your cash reserves then flipping is the way but just be careful - that too takes a lot of work and research to make sure you don’t lose money.  

I know what my ideal life looks like in ten years, unfortunately, I don’t feel like I can have my ideal life now because I am having to stay in the state that I am in until we can move without risk of my husband losing custody of his child, which will be in about 10 years so believe it or not I do spend a lot of time thinking about what I want the future to be like.

The program stipulates that you MUST stay in the home 5 years or you lose a pro rated portion of that 8k.

If you lose your source of primary income, do you have enough cash to make it through the crisis?