1. Save up all the payments you need to make and send them in one transaction.
On electrum, go to tools > "pay to many" to do this, enter in each payment as <address>,<amount>
This is ome that really relates to me as this is something I have practiced as well and I have equally maintained that there is no way the fees wont go up so far we are always happy about the increase in price and the difficulty experienced in mining a bitcoin. I guess the only way around it is to manage the situation to our advantage in which OP has rightly enumerated.