I currently live in Butte, Mt but plan on moving to Phoenix, Az for 6 months out of the year.

We had to save up the 5% to get our first place with an 80/15 first and second mortgage.  

Start saving up and buy your first place.

It's basically built on top of WordPress core and they made it simple and easy to navigate.Where in wordpress, you have to get some plugins (some are also monthly paid) to achieve the same kind of functionality.As @Todd Heitner mentioned, SEO is not just about having a good hosting/platform and features, it's about utilizing the features in a way so your brand has visibility and people that come into your website gets proper value of their time spent.Here's a table comparison for you that I wrote earlier:Now whether you have a carrot or a wordpress site, for SEO, you will need:- Website Credibility (Personalisation)- On Page SEO (Keywords, Titles, Meta Tags, Description, Image ALT Tags & Optimization etc)- Monthly Content Publishing (Regular Blogs & Location Pages)- Monthly OFF Page SEO (Citations, BacklinksNow if you consider the cost, end of the day it's quite same for both the platforms.But if you are starting fresh, I see no point of having their 180$ plan, you can continue with 89$/month plan from carrot and assign someone in your team to put regular blog posts and update the location pages.

Are you planning to use those funds as a downpayment for the purchase of the investment property in the US?

If you want to talk condo law in Hawaii, I can tell you the aftermath of the Lahaina fire makes me hesitant to have an HOA ever again, but we will save that for the blog!

The plan is indeed to house-hack.

and if you don't have enough money to house hack in San Diego... save up until you do.and if you want to move somewhere else, house hack there. 

What are your investment plans moving forward?

Trust your plan.