Before you make a transaction , always do well to check the average fee rate at that period of time. You. Can make use of
MEMPOOL space .
Canceling the transaction simply means you will be spending more on fees since you will have to increase the fees and bump the transaction back to your wallet. Instead you can just bump the fee if you enabled RBF to the exchange address.
I do not know bitcoin core very well, else I would've known the possibility of setting the right fee rate. In electrum, there's a level of fee rate you would set and it would inform you its too low, then you need to increase it if you want your transactions confirmed on time.
Cancelling a transaction is the same process as double spending it to the destination address, you bump the fee and spend it back to your wallet and in the end only enrich the miners and achieve nothing, so its better to bump the fee and send it to the destination address, but in the case of OP, he has literally no spare and he would have to wait for as long as it takes for it to drop back to the wallet if at all it would happen, unless he deposits some coins into the wallet to bump the fee, but in his case it makes no sense since the funds he is sending across is very little.