Thanks for the replies! From more research it looks like by setting the fee manually, which some wallets allow the fee to be set manually could be a fraction of the price? Although it might now be accepted right away, would have to wait for a block. Any truth to this and how much cheaper?
you can set your fee manually and from experience there are a few wallets that lets you easily do this. Bitcoin core let's you do this(obviously). Blockchain.info has a custom send feature in which you can send with a manually set fee. Electrum let's you choose the level of fees you would want to pay. I'm not sure whether you can choose exact values but it should be close enough. Copay is somewhat like electrum but with even less flexibility.
Think of miner fees as a fee you pay them for a confirmation on your transaction, so that your transaction is proven to be valid and not a double spend. I would not recommend going below the recommended fee level unless you are confident you can accelerate your tx or you don't care about your transaction being stuck.