fee's and unconfirmed transactions

[smooth nobody]

i use bitcoin core. i have 2 transactions from nov 7 that have not confirmed. a few days ago i sent another transaction and bumped my fee up to 0.00012. that transaction has not gone through either. at this point i had 3 transactions that have not gone through. i started to stress and thought something was wrong on my end. i re-installed windows and downloaded the blockchain again. all 3 of those transactions vanished from my transaction history. are those transactions definitely not going through? i hear after so long transactions get dropped/expired/rejected or something like that. however i also hear this is false information and all transactions get confirmed eventually. which is accurate?

i was reading segwit or lightning is suppose to help alleviate the slow confirmations and high fees. is this something that happens automatically or do users have to do something to make it work?

how do i determine what is an appropriate fee to pay?

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[buwaytress]

You really need to start paying attention to the forum. The best starting point is the stickies. But anyway:

1. Yep, you probably had those txs dropped. If it's not in your history and you can't find it on blockchain explorer, then they were never confirmed. What happened: your fees were too low, miners never picked them up. Nodes eventually stopped broadcasting them (or your wallet stopped doing it), and the network no longer knows of their existence.
2. That's good for you! Now you can read the sticky and start afresh.
3. Use manual fees. And use an estimator like https://bitcoinfees.earn.com right at the moment you want to spend. Add the fees, maybe bump it up by 10 sats/byte. It's not 100% accurate, but it's always helped me.
4. To benefit from Segwit, you must use a SegWit address to spend the coins.

[smooth nobody]

i did read the sticky.

the OP said transactions will be forgotten after a few days. but the very first post another guy said bitcoin core will constantly re-broadcast the transaction. doesn't that mean transactions will never be forgotten?

another thing i find confusing is the transaction is not in my wallet history but i can see it on the block chain. does that mean it may eventually go through?

how do i use a segwit address?