is it safe to update from Monterey to Ventura?

nicholaseilitz wrote:

is it safe to update now to ventura 13.3.1

it usually is. I myself have never encountered an issue simply due to a macOS upgrade.

are there any bugs or anything to worry about because the first time i tried upgrading it went nuts and i lost everything i had on my hard drive and can’t get back so 🤔

that is why you will see "make a backup first" as a very frequent recommendation in this forum. if something goes wrong during the upgrade, and it can, and you have no backup, then you are faced with data loss. it appears that you have already seen the negative results.

so I would recommend getting an external HDD and use TimeMachine to backup your Mac regularly, as well as before trying a macOS upgrade.

please see Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

The first rule of updating/upgrading is, make sure you have a current backup.

There are bugs in every operating system ever made. However, I would be running Ventura on all my Macs if it were possible.

The problems that most people have with Ventura are mostly of their own making with software that is not needed and is in conflict with the system like any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac. If you've installed any of those uninstall them according to the developer's instructions before upgrading to Ventura.

I've been running Venbtura on my 2017 27" iMac since it was released and it's running beautifully and very fast.

Unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer's, school's or bank's servers, they provide false security from a privacy standpoint.  Read these two articles: Public VPN's are anything but private and Former Malware Distributor Kape Technologies Now Owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, Zenmate, and a Collection of VPN “Review” Websites.