I know I'm headed for hearing aids probably sometime in the next 5 years or so. 30 years in the trucking industry and banging around buildings on forklifts and such has really taken it's toll & I have a very notable loss of hearing in what seems to be the lower frequencies. A real eye opener for me has been that a few times in the last few weeks the charge cord on my Volt in the driveway has been a bit wonky for some reason and the "charge cord power loss alert" (which is a low-frequency gurgling noise, not a full on car alarm) has gone off overnight. My wife wakes me up and tells me "Your alarm is going off", and I can't hear didly squat. Same for other things where there's been some weird noise outside or something that my wife hears and, yeah, I can't hear it.
I've pretty much always worn earplugs while riding, and now I use in-ear monitors with earplug attachments while riding (just as good), but it's the probably 2 decades of over the road driving in loud trucks (before I starter wearing earplugs then as well) have caught up to me. That, and just plain getting old lol.
I think this one of the biggest rip offs on the face of the planet when you look at what these things are, which are glorified earbuds. Just like how boutique eyeglass places sell frames that cost them $50 wholesale for $700, I'm confident that hearing aids have insane markups somewhere along the line. Some cursory searching shows markups as much as 6x their wholesale cost.
They weren't before?