Most of what we own today is not owned. It is licensed. That distinction is easy to miss in daily life, but it becomes visible at death, and what it reveals is significant.
When you purchase a film on a digital platform, you are buying the right to watch it under conditions the platform sets and can change at any time. Apple, Amazon, and Google have each removed purchased content from accounts without notice. When the account holder dies, the licence typically dies with them. There is no inheritance mechanism in most terms of service, and the law in most jurisdictions has not caught up. Your children will not inherit your digital film collection, your Kindle library, your music purchases, or your app licences. Those accounts will simply close.
This is the current situation, not a distant risk. And a growing share of what people think of as their estate is made up of exactly these kinds of assets.
Set against this, consider two categories of physical object.
A well-made mechanical watch from a reputable maker has no licence terms, no server dependency, and no corporate intermediary. It is owned outright. A Swiss or Japanese watch made in 1970 is worth more today, in real terms, than it was when new. The movement is repairable with tools and skills that exist independently of any single manufacturer. A good watch can be serviced indefinitely. It passes between generations in a way that a Spotify account cannot, because it is a thing, not an access right.
Cast-iron cookware makes the same point with less ceremony. A skillet bought decades ago is functionally identical to one bought today. Given minimal care, it will outlast the person who owns it. The seasoning built up over years of use adds genuine value. These pans move between generations without complication, because ownership is not in question. There is no login, no account recovery process, no terms of service to negotiate.
The allocation question is worth taking seriously. Over a working life, most households spend significant sums building collections of digital assets that will evaporate at death, and relatively little building a stock of physical objects that would appreciate and transfer.
Put rough numbers to it. Streaming services, digital purchases, and software subscriptions add up to perhaps EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,000 per year for a typical household. Over thirty years, that is EUR 45,000 to EUR 60,000 spent on access rights that leave nothing behind. A EUR 2,000 mechanical watch bought once, cared for, and handed on is a fundamentally different kind of asset. It is real property. It does not require a password. It accumulates history rather than depreciating toward zero.
This is not a case against digital tools. Convenience has genuine value and is worth paying for. The argument is narrower: when you think about what a household’s balance sheet looks like across a generation rather than a year, the digital side weighs close to nothing. Good physical objects compound.
The makers of serious mechanical watches in 1970 are still making watches. The foundries that pour cast iron are still pouring it. These objects resist depreciation because they are not produced by software and cannot be replicated cheaply. The materials, the craft, the physical supply are all bounded in ways that digital content is not. That is why prices on heritage goods tend to rise over time rather than fall.
Estate planning is mostly discussed in terms of financial accounts and real property. It is worth thinking about objects as well. What in your home can be inherited without a lawyer, a password, or a platform’s cooperation? What requires a login to access? For most households, the second list is much longer than the first. That imbalance is worth correcting deliberately, over time, as a matter of considered allocation rather than sentiment.
The Finite Resources guide to cast-iron cookware covers what to look for and which pieces hold up across decades. The guide to mechanical watches does the same for the watch category.
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