Quote from: evanagreer on January 16, 2016, 01:24:31 AM

Ok - I set up electrum and sent over .01 BTC as a test. Couple more questions...

The private key, is that the 12 word combination I was told to write down? Or is that used just used for recovering the wallet?

The 12 word combination is the seed that is used for generating the private keys. Every bitcoin address in the wallet will have its own private key, but anyone with access to the seed can generate all those private keys. This is how the the 12 word combination "recovers the wallet". The wallet uses the seed to re-generate all the private keys and addresses. Therefore, as long as you have that seed there is no need to backup private keys individually. Also, it is important to keep that seed as safe and secure as you would the private keys themselves. Anyone that gains access to the seed can steal all your bitcoins.

Quote from: evanagreer on January 16, 2016, 01:24:31 AM

I also did another test transfer from Electrum to my Coinbase account. I intended to send the .01 BTC, but Electrum wouldn't let me send it with any less that a 0.0006 BTC fee. Is this normal?

That sounds high. Typically I'd expect such a transaction to have a fee no larger than 0.0001 BTC. Are you sure it wasn't 0.00006 BTC?

Quote from: evanagreer on January 16, 2016, 01:24:31 AM

Those are high fees if you intend to use the wallet much at all. And is the fee relative to how large the transaction is? if I sent 1 BTC would it charge me .06?

The fee is relative to the size of the transaction in bytes not in bitcoins. Generally the fees are calculated on a "per kilobyte" basis. It is possible to have a very small value transaction (for example 0.00001 BTC) that is more than 10 kilobytes in size. It is also possible to have a very high value transaction (for example 100 BTC) that is less than 300 bytes in size. The size (in bytes) of the transaction depends on the number of inputs and number of outputs in the transaction, and not on the quantity of bitcoins.