Your questions are all intelligent questions, but it takes time to find your footing with the analysis and strategy stages of the acquisition process.

Greater dependence on debt, more manipulation needed from the fed to artificially sustain the markets, asset inflation, greater civil unrest etc. 

She is extremely intelligent and we loved working with her. 

Intelligent investors will deduct, from their rental income, a 10% return on that dead cash knowing that having it lying dead in a property is earning nothing if they do not.

Don't get me wrong, stick to your criteria and numbers #1, but if you're putting out safe (you mentioned low), well-analyzed offers, I wouldn't suggest limiting them just because you're artificially trying to lower the number of deals you have to analyze.

If you have reasonable intelligence, becoming a successful investors is one part mindset, discipline, determination, and the other part is action....specifically knowing how to prepare, then taking action when you are ready, you've worked hard to find/negotiate a good deal and the time is right to do so.Start checking out books at your local library, spend time with others actually investing in real estate, and when you're ready, take action. 

Think of a LLC, or a corporation, as a separate legal entity with the power of an artificial person according to the law (i.e. enter into contracts, bring a lawsuit, etc). 

If we don't take a swing in the next year or two, I think the rest of our lives will be fairly predictable, and rolling the dice in an intelligent fashion to put a new trajectory on things sounds attractive to each of us.

I want to be able to ask intelligent questions that will spawn some futher discussions which will help me gauge what he does.  

Using a larger down payment does not increase real cash flow it simply forces artificial cash flow.