Jim Planey and his wife both work: He's a principal at commercial real estate firm Lee & Associates in Chicago, and she is starting her second year as a grade school speech pathologist after recently earning a master's degree at Northwestern University.

The couple live in affluent Glenview, and Planey owns a 2003 Maserati, bought used in 2004 for $70,000 and now fully paid for. But the 64-year-old is looking to trim his spending, and his beloved red coupe may be put up for sale.

"With the economy the way it is, and may be for a while, I no longer feel comfortable with its insurance and maintenance" costs of about $200 a month, he said. That doesn't include the high-octane fuel it runs on.

A new car for daily use isn't on the horizon either. They're hanging onto their other three cars well past the point at which they'd normally be looking to upgrade. Although the cars lack new electronics such as on-board navigation systems, "We have found that our older cars, the oldest of which is 2002, work just fine," Planey said.

With worries over a double-dip recession mounting, Planey is also hoping to hasten the financial independence of his children, all college graduates.

"My wife and I have begun to accelerate removing our offered financial support from the three young adults a bit at a time," he said. "We're now evaluating paying cellphone bills, I-PASS costs and health insurance."

For most residents of Glenview, where the median family income is just over $120,000 and unemployment remains low for the state, at an average of 6.8 percent for 2010, the recession did not spell hardship.

But the nips and tucks made by hundreds of thousands of American families represent one of the biggest reasons the economy is in so much trouble and faces the prospect of more pain in the years ahead. The tiny ripples of Americans closing their wallets have built to a tsunami for a national economy that is overwhelmingly dependent on consumer spending.

Consumer confidence was growing at the start of the year but turned during the spring as oil prices spiked, job growth fell off and home prices sagged. And the public's mood has only darkened since, with the political turmoil over the debt ceiling, the downgrading of U.S. debt by Standard & Poor's and the volatile stock markets.

The latest survey by the University of Michigan found that consumer confidence tanked in early August to levels lower than during the recession. Expectations for the future were the gloomiest since 1980.

And data for June, the most recent available, show that spending had either fallen slightly or was flat after rising for much of the previous year and a half. Rather than hitting the stores, government figures show, more families were squirreling away more money.

Among them is Chicagoan Sarah Sheehan, 29, an office manager for a financial firm. She and her husband, a heavy-equipment operator for a railroad, have reduced spending to pay off credit card debt and build savings as they start to think about having children.

On the income side of the ledger, her husband also takes overtime whenever he can.

"In his last two-week pay period, he worked 120 hours in an effort to pay down debt at a quicker pace, since in the future the overtime may not be available," Sheehan said.

The couple set up a new cash system for handling gas, grocery and sundry expenses; they stock up on eggs, fruits and vegetables at Costco and make brown bag lunches.

"We no longer use our debit cards, and each week we pull cash out of the bank for whatever is budgeted," she said. "When the cash runs out for the week, we just have to wait until the next week to get more."

The cash system has eliminated a lot of needless spending, she said.

"It makes us think about our purchases a lot more when you know that the cash that's in your wallet is all you have," Sheehan said.

She allows herself to eat out at lunch only once a week, saving about $35 a week in the process. Brown-bagging it most of the time was "not something we were doing even three months ago," Sheehan said. "These small changes have made us more comfortable about our spending and saving."

Despite such changes in behavior, analysts and merchants haven't given up on U.S. consumer spending. For one thing, many figure that people can't keep holding off on buying or replacing basic needs. The average car on U.S. roads is more than 10.6 years old. Many homeowners are making do with clanking washing machines and dishwashers.

In one sign of pent-up demand, even amid the dreary consumer sentiment, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales in July edged up 0.5 percent from June. Sales rose for cars, appliances and clothes.

Still, if middle-class incomes don't grow, the only way consumer spending can increase is if buyers use credit cards or borrow. Consumer debt has started to rise again, but the recession and its aftermath offer grim evidence of what that kind of growth leads to.

A study of affluent investors, released Wednesday by Merrill Lynch, shows that Chicagoans have become more anxious about a number of financial issues since the beginning of the year, including concerns about whether their retirement assets will last throughout their lifetime. For some, that translates to yet more pulling back on spending.

Pat Grimes, a senior vice president at a suburban bank, has recently resisted two major consumer purchases: a vacation and a new car.

After a sewer backup caused a flood at her home, leading to an unexpected bill of yet-unknown size, she canceled a planned trip to New Mexico, which had already been scaled down from an Alaskan cruise.

And Grimes, 60, is finding other ways to trim spending.

In her younger days, Grimes said, she wouldn't be caught dead in a car more than 5 years old. Now she hopes to get five more years out of her already-10-year-old Toyota, which has 90,000 miles on it.

She thinks "constantly" about making sure she has enough money to live on after she retires, though she has no immediate plans to do so. Having health insurance is a priority, and, she said, she loves her job.

Marion Ammons, 69, visiting Chicago from Connecticut for five days this week, said not much has changed in her life the last few years because she has always been good at budgeting. She has never refinanced her house and would do so only if her finances got tight, she said, or to buy her dream vehicle, a Hummer.

But she considers herself frugal, regularly shopping in thrift stores. She is spending her time in Chicago mostly browsing and walking around the city, though her finances still allow her the vacation.

"I know how to stretch a dollar," she said.

For those working, stagnant wages plus job concerns conspire to keep spending low.

In the second quarter of 2011, median weekly earnings for U.S. workers were $756, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's down 1.5 percent from a year earlier when adjusted for inflation.

Hazel Crest resident Michael King, 53, has been a postal carrier since 1984 and said he's keeping up with his bills but is living "payday to payday."

He and his wife of 20 years, Sherrion, who works at a retirement community, have three children. King said his 18-year-old son can't find a job but also can't get financial aid for college because the couple's combined income is too large for him to qualify.

In the past few years, the couple has had to make several home improvements: on the garage door, roof, gutters and plumbing. Now the air conditioning needs fixing.

King said he believes that it'll be at least three years before he sees financial "daylight" -- that's when his car will be paid off -- "as long as I can keep my job and keep working until then."

Meanwhile, the couple decided to go out less -- "Going back and forth, you waste a lot of gas," King said -- and likely will also cut back on one of their favorite pastimes: entertaining guests at home.

"We'll be entertaining ourselves," Sherrion said.

Occasionally, she makes an off-hand remark about putting off a bill for a month so they can have fun, but her husband won't hear of it.

Lack of income growth among the more affluent has translated into trouble for scores of small service businesses and thousands of workers in construction, landscaping, retail sales and other sectors.

Andrea Herrera, president and owner of Chicago-based Amazing Edibles Catering, launched her company 17 years ago. About 70 percent of its clients, including the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, are in education.

She said she's "cautiously optimistic" about the economy and said her revenue is even with last year. She just hired a consulting firm, Mindflow Group, to help her grow her business.

Still, "a few of our vendors who are also small businesses have closed their doors in the past few months," Herrera said. "We had been planning to buy a new van for our business this year but have decided to make do with what we have and not make the investment in another vehicle right now."

Jimmi Modi, owner of Modi's newsstand on Chicago and Michigan avenues, has seen sales drop in recent years because of the economy and other factors affecting the media business. He had to let go a worker he'd hired to cover one shift because he could not afford the wages.

"People are watching how they spend," he said. "I don't sell as many newspapers and magazines."

Modi, in turn, has cut back on his spending, especially buying clothes and going out for meals.

Faye Fiore and Don Lee of Tribune Newspapers contributed.

byerak@tribune.com

Twitter: @beckyyerak

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