Apple charges $169 for AppleCare+ now but I got AppleCare for my new 2017 iMac for about $80 from a third party seller on Amazon.
The one year limited warranty comes with the price of the machine but is voided once you open it up.
Anyway, you removed the most failure prone component in that HDD and you seem to be lucky having never had any problems up till now.
I'll add that perspective is needed.
Like I've said, I've used, and been around other people who use macs for 30+ years now. They're incredibly reliable. That's one of the big reasons you and I (and so many others here love apple products) because they're really well built and reliable.
Of course there's plenty of stories about people who bought apple care and it saved their asses. That's great, but I would argue those stories are few and far between among people who have macs (AND TAKE GOOD CARE OF THEM - that's key).
I would argue that for every dozen or so stories of people who tell you applecare saved their asses, there's
thousands on the other side who never had to use their applecare.
People will tell you when applcare saved them, because it's a 'story', and others who bought applecare like to share those stories because it helps make them feel better about spending their own $$$ on applecare.
So you may say I'm 'lucky' that I haven't had a mac failure in the past 5 years. I would say that's not 'lucky', but instead anyone who had a mac fail is 'unlucky' ... since it's a failure that requires applecare that's unlikely, not the other way around.
P.S. as a side note, the two majors repairs I've ever needed done were both on 2011 macbook pro's with the video card issues ... and guess what: Apple had a special extended warranty for those computers so even without applecare (It would have been expired anyway) the fixes were free.
