Daily food court lunches?

A thing of the past for Erika Johnson of Oakland. Packed lunches save a few bucks.

Drinks after work?

"That's completely gone," says Kurt Threlfall of Shadyside.

The new living room furniture that Beaver County's Vickie Franchino has been pining for?

Deferred, until the economy stabilizes, even though her living room set is "falling apart."

Americans, and Pittsburghers, have been spooked by the bad news from Wall Street. The anxiety sparked by bank failures and the Dow Jones' free fall is stacked on top of a lousy summer: Food costs are still way up. The housing market is still in the tank. Borrowed money is more expensive. And gasoline prices, while they've come down in recent weeks, are still 60 or 70 cents more per gallon than they were a year ago, and are well above the $1.74 a gallon we were paying in November 2004, when the last presidential election was held.

Some are driven to saving by circumstance; just as many are merely battening the hatches against what may come, stunned by 401(k) losses. Either way, it adds up to tighter budgets, trimming costs where possible, a new sense of frugality underscored by legitimate fears of a recession, if not another Great Depression -- six in 10 Americans polled last week by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. said they thought another depression was "very likely" or "somewhat likely." The third quarter of 2008 may bring the first drop in personal consumption in 17 years, and consumer confidence is at record lows.

If there's any good news, it's that for many of us, there's more fat to cut these days.

In theory, anyway. We spend a lot more money today on "necessities" that two decades ago weren't considered necessities -- or hadn't even been invented yet. The Pew Research Center recently polled Americans about their monthly expenses, asking which were considered luxuries, and which were considered necessities.

Half of all Americans now say cell phones and home computers are just as essential as a car or a washing machine. About a third of Americans say cable TV and high-speed Internet are an absolute necessity. (And 3 percent said that their MP3 player was vital to daily living.)

These "necessities" mean that people are paying more bills than ever, an average of 11 or 12 bills a month. In addition to the actual necessities -- home, utilities, food and transportation costs -- a married couple might now be paying for cable, high-speed Internet and two separate cell phone accounts, monthly drains on the checking account their parents and grandparents never contemplated.

"Those are things people aren't going to get rid of, regardless of the state of the economy," said Kerri Marchinsky of Whitehall.

Ms. Marchinsky has a bird's-eye view of the Wall Street fallout. As a student, she's been trying to cut back in small ways -- keeping an eye out for sales, taking the bus Downtown four days a week instead of driving and paying for parking. And as an employee of Point Park University, she sees what the credit crisis is doing to students -- they can't borrow money as cheaply as they used to, or at all in some cases, meaning student loans are harder to come by.

"A lot of students have been affected by this," she said.

We have more bills to pay, less money to pay it with. That leaves less discretionary money to spend at the end of the month -- fewer trips to restaurants, the movie theater and the mall.

Keynesian economists called it the "paradox of thrift." Saving seems like a good idea for a family or an individual -- and it is -- but it's not necessarily good for the economy as a whole, because if everybody pulls back on spending at once, the service economy grinds, at least in the short term. (The good news is that many modern economists don't buy into the thrift paradox anymore.)

Families in a pinch will usually try to cut corners -- spend less on groceries and clothes, driving less by consolidating errands, postponing vacations -- before they shed entire bills from their spending plan.

That's partly because, while discretionary, some costs are more easily escaped than others. Most cable TV bills could be cut if you're a long-time subscriber, but many cell phone carriers will charge you hundreds of dollars if you try to get out of your contract early. A car you own can be traded in or sold; a car lease has to be bought out. Your ability to cut "luxuries" will depend on whether you've signed a long-term contract or are being billed month-to-month.

James Eisnor, a financial planner with BenchMark and board chairman of the Financial Planning Association's Pittsburgh chapter, said he's heard clients talk about selling their children's cars, and knows of seniors who are putting off their dream vacations.

That's fine. But he said you shouldn't let belt-tightening and the Wall Street panic prevent you from putting money toward your retirement, even though that's what some are doing.

"One of the things people cannot afford to cut out of their budgets is savings," he said. Clients have told him "in order to keep gas in my car, I can't save as much." It's the wrong approach, Mr. Eisnor said, even if he understands the temptation.

"I think in these times, people are extremely emotional. They're going to be opening up their statements, [and] it's going to show bleeding," he said.

Another necessity people shouldn't be cutting, but are -- health care. A summer poll from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found that 22 percent of Americans said they'd reduced the number of times they see the doctor as a result of the troubling economy, today's economy. And 11 percent have cut back the number of prescriptions they take, or have trimmed their dosages to make the prescriptions last longer.

"There's a lot of evidence that the more patients are required to pay more for their care, the more that they make economic decisions about what to get or what not," a family physician, Dr. Michael Potter, told the San Francisco Chronicle after the poll was released.

Yet another poll suggests that consumer spending hasn't been curtailed in Pittsburgh to the same degree as it has elsewhere in the country. A Visa Inc, survey released last week said that 82 of Pittsburghers plan to celebrate Halloween in some way, and those who celebrate will spend $51 dollars on candy, costumes and decorations, which is 9 percent more than the national average of $47.

Either we're impervious to the bad news, or we're really attached to Halloween. (Or maybe we just have a better sense of perspective -- for most Americans, this is the worst financial crisis they've ever seen, but many Pittsburghers are old enough to remember the early 1980s, when mill closures sent unemployment rates into the stratosphere.)

Even if Pittsburgh has thus far dodged much of the fallout from the credit crisis, it never hurts to be vigilant, said Vickie Franchino, the woman from Beaver County who wants a new living room suite. While the Wall Street crisis is still ephemeral to her, she knows how quickly your neighbor's problem can become your own. She and her husband have been through poorly times layoffs before, and her husband's workplace has seen some recent downsizing.

"We're pretty cautious," she said. The specter of layoffs, recession or both are something "you always think about."