A man who retired at 65 says people warned him he'd 'go crazy' without work, but they couldn't have been more wrong

Courtesy of Bill Brown

Bill Brown, pictured, is spending his retirement learning woodworking in a shed he bought.

• Before retiring, Bill Brown says his friends warned him that he'd "go crazy" in retirement given his "type A" personality. 
• But, he already had a plan for how to deal with his personality type going into retirement: He spent $10,000 on a workspace for woodworking.
• He says that despite people's reactions to his decision to retire, he still looked forward to it. After officially retiring in 2018, he's enjoying his woodworking shed, and also travels and does some consulting work on the side. 
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When Bill Brown retired at age 65 in early spring 2019 from a career in information technology, people weren't saying "congrats" as much as he would have like to have heard. 

Instead, they said something else. "Everybody cautioned me severely that I would go crazy because I'm a type A personality," he told Business Insider. "And they were so wrong."

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They didn't know that Brown had put quite a bit of planning and thought into how he would spend his golden years. "I've never worked with my hands in my life, but I thought, 'OK, I'll work on wood,'" he said. "And if I screw it up, big deal, I'll burn it and I have firewood." 

So, the central South Carolina resident set out to make a place where he could do that. "In preparation for having to deal with that personality type, I spent about $10,000. I bought a shed - a man-cave, as you might describe it," said Brown.

He spent about $7,000 on the shed itself. "Then, I added an air conditioner, a refrigerator with a six pack, and a coffee maker," he said. A $3,000 collection of woodworking tools completed his new workspace. 

"The first few days I really spent doing nothing but going over to that shed, looking around, and thinking, 'Hm, I wonder what I'll even bother making,'" said Brown. "I was perfectly happy for the first couple of days taking naps."

But that just didn't fit his personality. "After a week or so, you do get tired of it," he said. 

So, he got to work in the shed making things. "I've made a table and I've made two bird houses to national wildlife federation standards," he said. 

Woodworking keeps Brown from living up to his friends' expectations in retirement. It not only keeps him from napping, but also says that it gives him a little alone time while his wife is out with friends or doing volunteer work. 

His best advice for other "type A" personalities approaching retirement is to plan to do something you enjoy. "Just make sure you have something outside of retirement, no matter what it is," he says. "It can be just somebody go to lunch with. It can be just something to do."

For over a year in retirement, Brown has proved the naysayers wrong - he's enjoying his woodworking shed between trips with his wife ... though he admits to still squeezing in some consulting work  on the side. 

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