hello, the ledger is only at  2 GB just now but if you wish to save space which is understandable, you can in config.txt set "full_ledger=1" to "full_ledger=0" and you will only use hyper.db (Hyper Blocks) which  is 69.6MB just now. When sending a tx and even a tx with data your fees are automatically taken away before you send your transaction, If your node says "connection to node lost" thats because you have tried to start your wallet before the node has finished doing the initial checks/DB Upgrades or is still syncing with the rest of the network. why don't you give the latest version  4.2.3.9 a go    https://github.com/hclivess/Bismuth/releases