Can I start playing now, without the risk of losing my save when a new update comes out? I'm tired of starting a new game every time a new update comes out
The answer to your question is no. The next planned update is the tech update which is a complete recode and change from 4:3 to 16:9. I'm going to go out on a limb and say there will be no old-save compatibility with the tech update.
However you did just say you were tired of starting a new game EVERY release, which isn't exactly accurate. Recent releases have pretty good save compatibility from release to release. If you have a save from an earlier pre-tech release you can probably play the new content in this release without replaying the whole game again. When you load a save from an earlier release the game warns you it might not work and then tries to rebuild the save. IIRC, this worked fine for me for all the pre-tech releases.
Kind of late for this advice, since there is 0 chance of old-save compatibility with the tech update, but for best results it is recommended to make your end-of-update save on the map screen for best compatibility with subsequent updates.