Some affluent Americans are reducing spending on discretionary expenses, like weekly massages.

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Even Dobbins, the teacup Yorkie, has to cut back.
Its owner, Betsy Illium, recently replaced the groomer who specializes in little dogs (and charges about $130) with one from the Petco chain, which charges $65.
Ms. Illium, a marketing consultant to medical practices and the owner of four Manhattan apartments (three are investment properties), is fortunate enough to have discretionary income.
But the dreary economic outlook has prompted her and Dobbins to scale back.
“It’s frightening,” said Ms. Illium, 45, noting that most of her money is invested in real estate.
She was appalled when she calculated that Dobbins’s grooming along with her own weekly hair, nail and massage appointments; gourmet groceries; restaurant meals and Starbucks coffee cost nearly $2,000 a month.
Now she gets manicures at a less expensive salon, meets her friends at a casual pizza restaurant and sends her sheets and towels to a laundry service instead of the dry cleaner.
These services might be considered luxuries in some cities, but they are frequently deemed necessities in New York City.
Rather than do without, many residents like Ms. Illium ? who are not in dire financial straits ? are looking critically at their spending.
And that decision, marketing scholars and consumer psychologists say, is telling.
They suggest that for consumers with disposable income, the act of spending less on everything from toilet paper to yoga classes has less to do with actually saving money and more to do with emotional health.
Sure, being thrifty can help people save a few thousand dollars a year, but it can also help them regain some sense of control as the economic news becomes bleaker.
Yet when these consumers cut back, they do so in ways that make them feel good and enable them to maintain their status.
Robert Meyer, the chairman of the marketing department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, does research in areas that include decision making under uncertainty.
to “a kind of healing process.
” “They’re seeing all this news media saying the value of your house has gone down, the value of your portfolio has gone down,” he said.
“Well, none of it is relative to their day-to-day spending.
Nevertheless it creates a feeling of poverty, which feels bad.
The way they can undo that is their daily savings perks, which make them feel richer.
” This why people are choosing to be thrifty about visible, routine expenses, he said.
“People aren’t doing it really because they’re saving money.
” And by cutting back, he said, “you’re not actually depriving yourself in any way, so you kind of have the best of both worlds.
” Larry D. Compeau, an associate professor of marketing at Clarkson University in Potsdam, in upstate New York, agreed, explaining that such behavior is really symbolic but enables consumers to feel prudent and responsible.
“This is how people who are not fighting paycheck to paycheck can feel they’re doing something,” he said.
(Though he pointed out that people may be pulling back only slightly because they are not feeling a downturn.
) In this way, people in New York are not that different from people in other cities.
Mr. Compeau said that in other parts of the country people may not be looking for cheaper places to send their dirty sheets, but they are buying less expensive bread and skipping dessert.
“It’s the same type of thing, and that’s why we all get nervous when consumers start pulling back,” he said.
The pruning of daily expenditures could set off a chain of events that actually contributes to an economic slide ? and more fear.
And increased fear, said consumer psychologists, could lead to further cutting back.
Lisa Germinsky, 33, a screenwriter who lives in Gramercy, on the East Side of Manhattan, has just begun to trim back.
“My boyfriend and I, we were talking and he’s just like doom and gloom, ‘impending recession,’ his stocks dropping,” she said.
“And I’m a freelancer, so I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ” She has resolved to travel from Manhattan to her former hair colorist in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, because a single-process color there is $40 ($44, factoring in the round-trip subway ride) instead of $100 or $130, which she paid at a Manhattan salon.
And the Greenpoint salon is not teeming with assistants requiring tips.
Joe Priester, an associate professor of marketing at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and the president of the Society for Consumer Psychology, is not surprised people scale back instead of abandon certain habits.
“In a way, a lot of these brands have become safe harbors for us,” he said.
“People build attachments to brands over time, and those are very much like friendships or buffering devices in our world.
You don’t hear people saying, ‘I’m not going to Starbucks.
’ It would be like saying ‘I’m going to cut off this friend.
’ ” KELLY SHIMODA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES JUAN KARITA/ASSOCIATED PRESS