I am loading up an old wallet from 2014 to see what was in it and I found about 120 or so Monero. I was going to transfer this to an exchange but my output says:
Error: Failed to find a way to create transactions. This is usually due to dust which is so small it cannot pay for itself in fees, or trying to send more money than the unlocked balance, or not leaving enough for fees
So I looked at the log and it says:
WARN wallet.simplewallet src/simplewallet/simplewallet.cpp:2491 not enough money to transfer, available only 123.082344170105, transaction amount 128.195681160000 = 123.000000000000 + 5.195681160000 (fee)
So is there REALLY an over 5 XMR fee for sending Monero or am I doing something wrong? I mean if that is the fee for sending transactions I don't know how Monero is still alive. I am guessing that I am doing wrong on my part. Thanks for your help.
Your wallet most likely has a lot of (small) inputs, which makes the size of the transaction fairly large. A typical RingCT transaction currently is around 20-25 cents. In addition, if I recall correctly, the fee will be slightly lower after the upcoming hard fork (April 15).
Given that you own a wallet with a lot of (small) inputs. I'd advise to do as follows.
[1] Run the sweep_unmixable command in monero-wallet-cli. This will combine all your small unmixable inputs into a single output. That is, it will basically "undust" your "dust".
[2] Subsequently, you should be able to use sweep_all to send your full balance to a different address (if that is your intend). Note that the fee will be subtracted from the total balance. Thus, if you, for instance, have 100 XMR and the transaction costs 0.1 XMR (fee), 99.9 XMR will be sent to the recipient and the miner that includes your transaction into a block will take 0.1 XMR as fee.
That is very good info thank you. Yes I there are a lot of small transactions when I was pool mining way back when. I am getting this now when running the command:
Balance: 123.082344523698, unlocked balance: 123.082344523698
[wallet 111111]: sweep_unmixable
Wallet password:
Error: internal error: Transaction cannot pay for itself
Also, Every time I run the monero-wallet-cli.exe I get the green transaction and the received then I eventually get to a prompt where I can type commands. Earlier my wallet was only showing 59 monero now it is showing 123 and not sure why it has changed. Pleasant surprise. Thanks for your help btw.