However, if you just simply want to send your coins as fast as possible, there is no need to update it. After the sync is done, you should simply be able to send your transaction if that's what you want to do.
Exactly... I only update my node's bitcoind if (and only if) there's a feature i truely need or if a security vulnerability is found that would actually impact me.
I ran 0.16.0 untill I upgraded to 0.20.1. I skipped all versions in between and was able to create transactions without any issues... I'm currently running 0.20.1 and i'll probably skip (at least) 0.21.0.
It's not like you're running 0.1.0....
by the way, have a look at this: https://bitnodes.io/nodes/?q=United%20States
I'm defenately not the only one not upgrading to the latest release every time It seems like 34 us nodes (out of a total of 9204 monitored nodes) are still running version 0.8.x