lt IS more important to learn what you don't know and it is not about maximizing profits at the beginning of your career.What you learn from Phil or any other mentor will be extremely valuable down the road.Be humble, heed your mentor/s advice, grind it out, use your skills in mathematics to evaulate deals deals better than most, and succeed massively.

I enjoy my engineering classes and the mathematics quite a lot, but it is not the end goal. the end goal is financial freedom that is why I joined the military so I could save for 4 years and get a free degree and set my life up how I want to.

Others are on the use all your leverage train because mathematically it tends to make sense, but I don’t believe that’s smart when adjusted for risks.

(Take it from a Mathematics degreed, NASA scientist).You can not take a small sample from a larger environment with a specific set of characteristics and group them into one audience and then conclude that BECAUSE of the characteristics you have seleceted you then project that characteristic over the entire group.Duh.. that obviously doeant make sense.Let me translate this into English.You have a bunch of apples. some red, some green some yellow.You take all the red ones away and place them into one group.

Each bank is different and there is no mathematical equation (unfortunately), but I wondered if there was a general rule of thumb so to speak.

Mathematically, it actually doesn't matter whether the syndicator takes part of the money and put it back in as an investment (as the OP is assuming) or go blow it all in Vegas.  

You seem comparatively young, which gives you a mathematically higher threshold for risk (although your personal threshold/appetite should also be considered).

Those reasons all appear to be mathematically sound.

@Brian Volland- the statement about ROI on paying down any debt early was just a general statement of mathematical fact. 

If we find assets again in a range that makes sense mathematically, we'll go back in.