Mixed results. The picture isn’t all bad, depending on who you talk to. For Australian national Emma Cantwell, who recently joined public relations agency Hill and Knowlton in Dubai after living in Ireland, facing the future requires a more measured approach without shedding long-term plans. “Curbing, in some respects I guess I have. But with the idea that cutting back in some areas will allow me to spend in others, like travel, that will hopefully become cheaper as less people are able to afford it,” says Cantwell. She adds that the recent turn of events have inclined her towards the “buy in gloom, sell in boom” theory that her father professes. “I’m aware that now would be a good time to invest in property as prices back home are falling and increased numbers of people are looking to rent,” she explains.

Cantwell is also aware of the pressures that rising gasoline prices place on governments and bank balances in other countries. “I strongly believe that people in the UAE have an opportunity to make lifestyle changes before the resource-depleting alarm begins to sound,” she says. Cantwell represents the group that sees “no real significant lifestyle change” but believes in the theory that “a dollar-dirham saved is worth more than it usually would be.”

The penny-saved-is-a-penny-earned dictum is also being followed by Doha-based public relations professional Bosco Menezes. “My daily expenses and a few much-awaited buys have been put on the back burner. I have also made a New Year’s resolution to be an intelligent spender,” says Menezes.

James Crichton, the director of sales and marketing at BMW Group Middle East, says his family - he is married with two kids - is reconsidering whether they should still go on a skiing holiday this year. “We have also been more careful with our spending (is it a must have or a nice to have?), and are more focused on saving and investments,” says Crichton.

Homemaker Uzma Salman echoes that sentiment. “In anticipation of troubled times, we chose to skip the vacation in 2008, and things are only getting worse in 2009,” she says. “At the least, it is going to be two years without vacations for us.”

Whether one chooses to use 2009 as an opportunity to adopt a simpler lifestyle or not, some see the sudden pall of gloom as “the end of excess, of indulgence” for the moment. Luxury marketing expert Adnan Dawood calls it “a rude shock to the ostentatious rock-and-roll lifestyle that people had gotten used to enjoying by tapping in to the credit card.” According to him, till very re-cently it was impossible to book tables at some of the prestigious lifestyle joints in Dubai. It’s not quite the same now.

And wild spending habits weren’t confined to personal habits. “I remember counting 60 pages of only real estate advertisements in a leading newspaper on a single day. Count them today and you will notice the difference,” he says.

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