Noe Valley resident Evan Graner, 31, isn't going out on the town as often as he used to, using the money he saves to pay down debt.

Regnaldo Woods, 20, better known as YQ, has stopped buying fast food so he can help his mother with mortgage payments on their Daly City home.

Bella Comelo of San Leandro was never a big spender, but she used to fork out about $400 to $500 each year for clothes. Now she's stopped buying apparel altogether, fearful of what a weakening economy might do to family finances.

"I know the recession is coming. I'm more cautious than before," said Comelo, 69.

From Morgan Hill to Moraga, from Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz, Bay Area residents are tightening their belts.

You might say it's a move from shop till you drop to dropping the shopping. Dire reports of an economy on a downward spiral are prompting people from many walks of life to rethink spending plans, cut back on extravagances and set aside what they can in anticipation of harder times.

It's all part of a nationwide consumer retrenchment that's not only an effect of a listless economy, but also a major contributor to that weakness. The gathering pullback by consumers threatens to knock out the most important prop holding up the economy, across the region and across the nation.

Purchases of goods and services by ordinary Americans - everything from haircuts and soda to SUVs and HDTVs - represent roughly two-thirds of the nation's economic activity. The question now is how far consumers will pare their spending and how much damage that might do to an economy already on its knees.

Forecasters tell us to keep an eye on the job market and watch how much people are earning. The evidence there is disquieting. Rising unemployment and scant wage gains are cutting into the disposable cash of ordinary Americans.

"That bodes poorly for consumers," said John Lonski, chief economist with the credit rating firm Moody's Investors Service.

Combine a cash squeeze with the fear factor and you have a recipe for a consumer slowdown.

The latest numbers show consumer spending growth near a standstill. Nationwide, outlays for personal consumption rose just 0.2 percent in December from the month before, the Commerce Department reported recently.

Retail sales this holiday season posted their weakest gains since the beginning of the decade. And chain store sales last month were up only 0.5 percent from the comparable period the year before, the weakest January since records were first kept in 1970, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

The newfound hesitation to spend represents an economic sea change. Until recently, Americans showed themselves to be redoubtable shoppers, reaching for their credit cards through thick or thin - even after the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Consumers have historically surprised us with their willingness to spend no matter what," said Scott Hoyt, an analyst with the research firm Moody's Economy.com. "Every time we try to write them off, they find some way to finance their spending and keep going."

This time seems to be different. The toxic combination of a housing market crash, falling stock prices, rising costs for goods and services, a feeble dollar and climbing unemployment might just be knocking the American consumer for a loop.

The Bay Area, where housing prices and other living costs are in the stratosphere, has long been tough on the wallet. Now, with the jobless rate up, home prices in free fall and business activity slowing, more and more people find themselves on the edge.

"The price of milk has gone up tremendously ... the price of milk, the price of gasoline," complained Larry West, 58, an out-of-work technology contractor from Walnut Creek. "That's what's killing me. I look at my nest egg and think I can't survive."

To be sure, plenty of people in the affluent Bay Area have the means and the will to keep spending.

Norman Collier, 60, an engineer for a military contractor, lives with his wife in South San Jose. He describes himself as cost conscious, buying groceries and gas at Costco or Wal-Mart. He doesn't have expensive hobbies. For him and his wife, gardening is their biggest indulgence. "We're very big into tomatoes," he said.

But they didn't scrimp this holiday season. They bought clothes and a computer screen for their 24-year-old son and a phone for their 26-year-old daughter.

"We probably spent as much or more than we usually do," he reported.

To get a sense of the mood at the mall, The Chronicle interviewed a range of area residents about their views on the economy and their shopping habits.

We found widespread worry. People are feeling the pinch directly as the values of their homes and investments fall, and the cost of living goes up. Some have lost jobs or seen their incomes fall. Many say they are cutting back, especially on little luxuries such as restaurant meals.

During a recent weekday afternoon at Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo, of four consumers stopped at random only one was actually buying something - and that was a photograph of his daughter. Others were returning merchandise or, in one case, picking up a paycheck.

But not everyone is in retreat. For every Larry West, we found a Norman Collier. Even in a downturn, the bottom isn't likely to fall out of the regional economy. Consumers are simply too diverse for neat generalizations. Perhaps the best thing is just to listen to what a few of them have to say.

Larry West, 58, Walnut Creek

If there's anything that will throw spending into reverse, it's losing your job. That's what happened to Larry West.

For most of the last decade, West has worked steadily as a contract information technology manager, overseeing large projects. But in November, his job with a major telecommunications company ended. He's not been able to line up anything since, despite sending out an average of five inquiries a week.

"I have some money in the bank," he explained. "As a contractor, you always try to keep a reserve. My reserve is not as big as it should have been."

West, who lives by himself in a condo, said he's slashed dramatically what he spends on dining and entertainment. He and his girlfriend no longer take weekend trips to places like the Wine Country. He said he's shocked by how expensive everyday items such as food and gasoline have become.

"I've cut down a lot on the quality of the groceries I buy," he noted. "I'm a cheese lover, but I skip cheese now when I go to the grocery store."

Except during the tech crash at the beginning of the decade, when one project ended, West almost always was able to find something else quickly. He's surprised at how little response his applications have gotten. Now he's considering looking in other places, such as Los Angeles and Florida.

"I'm a people person and I like working with groups," he said. "What I'm really good at is talking on the phone."

Bella Comelo, 69, San Leandro

By all rights, Bella Comelo shouldn't be worrying about money. She and husband Ernest have paid off their ranch-style house. Social Security, her husband's pension from his job with Alameda County and Comelo's sick leave pay from her job with the Oakland Unified School District provide an adequate income. They have plenty of money set aside.

All the same, she's nervous. One friend lost a job at a bank, another at a mortgage company. Falling stock prices spooked her. Both she and her husband have health problems, which each month cost hundreds of dollars above what they get from Medicare and insurance. The price of their staple diet of fish and vegetables has gone up. So have bus fares.

What's more, she said, "In my neighborhood, houses were not selling. That was an indication that hard times were coming."

Always frugal, Comelo has trimmed spending even further. She didn't give holiday presents to friends this year and she's stopped shopping for clothes.

"I'm in a good situation," Comelo said. "But I don't know how long this recession will last. We don't want to take chances, dip into savings."

Comelo says her attitude reflects her upbringing. She migrated to the United States from India about 25 years ago.

"We are naturally the saving type," she explained. "We come from a place where there was no Social Security. We have to take care of ourselves."

Bill Hillebrand, 51, Sunnyvale

Bill Hillebrand had a grand vision when he planned the remodeling job on his house. Then the economy started softening and Hillebrand began to worry about how his landscaping business might be affected. Now "grand" is no longer the operative word for the project.

He and wife Sharon, a Pilates instructor, plan to add 600 square feet to their tract home, which they share with their 9-year-old twins. They're putting in a family room, two bathrooms and a master closet, while renovating the kitchen. Originally they budgeted about $60,000, a price Hillebrand thought was realistic because of his contractor connections. They've since scaled back to about $35,000, and will suspend work when money runs out.

"We've decided to be extremely careful," Hillebrand said. "We will do a lot of the work ourselves. Instead of buying designer fixtures, we'll go to Home Depot."

Hillebrand had planned to take out a loan to finance the project. But he's decided to stick with savings, cash flow and a tax refund.

"As you go into what looks like a recession - or at least a downturn - the last thing you want to do is take on more debt," he said.

So far, Hillebrand's business hasn't felt much effect from a slowing economy. But some of his vendors tell him they're getting fewer calls. One of them, looking for a little extra cash, even asked if he wanted to rent a truck the vendor couldn't use.

As for his customers, Hillebrand is concerned about recession psychology.

"So many of these decisions are emotional," he said. "They definitely have the money. But if they're not feeling right about the world, why should they spend it?"

Evan Graner, 31, San Francisco

There are plenty of people like Evan Graner in the Bay Area - young, single, with good-paying jobs and no mortgages to carry. It's easy to get sucked into a lifestyle filled with restaurant meals, weekend trips, nice vacations, concerts, movies and plays, all paid for with plastic.

But as the economy stalled, Graner got religion. Instead of spending so much, he started working hard to pay off his $25,000 in credit card debt. And when he gets his anti-recession tax rebate, it's going to his student loan.

Graner used to lay out $7 to $12 every workday for lunch. Now he brings his own meals. He's going to movies and the theater about half as often as he once did. He told his friends no on a Hawaii trip this year. And he's boosted the amount budgeted to pay his card debt to $1,100 from $700.

"Whipping out the credit card is something I'm doing a lot less," said Graner, who works as a brand manager for a large financial services company. "I'm not doing as many things with my friends on weekends because there isn't cash on hand."

The catalyst for this latter-day thrift was the plunge of the housing and stock markets.

"Part of it is that I'm getting older and I'm getting more responsible," Graner explained. "But the other thing is that when things like this happen in the marketplace, you're forced to look at your own situation. I don't think I would have changed if things hadn't taken the downturn they did."

Still, Graner stresses, he has not taken a vow of poverty.

"I'm still going skiing at Tahoe on the weekends," he said. "I've not given up the skiing because I paid for it already."

Art and Lindsay Okamoto, 40 and 35, Redwood Shores

For Art and Lindsay Okamoto, it's business as usual. But then the two aren't high rollers anyway.

"I don't think that the downturn has affected our spending," Art Okamoto said. "But we're typically cautious."

He is a product manager for a software company. His wife works for a children's health foundation. Their daughter Elin celebrated her first birthday at the end of January. The Okamotos took the day off to spend time with her and get her portrait taken.

"We definitely spend within our means. We've never been very extravagant," Lindsay Okamoto said.

The couple say they set aside as much as they can to fund retirement accounts. Major outlays include payments on the condo they bought four years ago and a car. Other than that, "it's just day-to-day items," Art Okamoto said. "We keep an eye on things."

He is philosophical about what's happening with housing and stocks.

"We bought our place. If it goes down, that's what's happened," Art Okamoto said.

As for his investments, he added, "I'm diversified enough. I'm not worried."

'YQ' Woods, 20, Daly City

For Regnaldo Lequan "YQ" Woods, it all came into focus when a woman his mother knows lost her home a month or so ago.

"She got kicked out," he said. "It just opened our eyes. It's really happening. People can lose their house."

His mother, who works for AT&T, now buys less expensive groceries and has turned down the heat in the Daly City house where they live with Woods' 13-year-old sister.

"My mother laid down the law," he said. "She's very nervous."

Woods has a budding hip-hop career, including a performance scheduled at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale next month. He's a student at College of San Mateo and works at the Disney Store in Hillsdale Shopping Center.

Lately, he's been economizing so he can help his mother with the mortgage bill. A few hundred dollars usually go each month to house payments.

"I help out as much as possible," he said. "Whenever something is needed, I come through."

The losers in all this are Quiznos and Burger King, where Woods used to drop his lunch money.

"Those two killed me," he said. "Now I'm usually packing a lunch from home."