The rich are sharing your financial pain – and contributing to it.

It may have taken longer and it may not be as acute, but there are early hints that the economic slump is crimping the lifestyles of the wealthy.

They are investing more conservatively, spending less on luxury goods and are being more thrifty with their credit cards.

That news may produce a shrug from many people who have lost their jobs or homes in this economy. The problem is that when the wealthy get stingy, it trickles down to the rest of us.

“It’s a sluggish economy, and its difficulties are felt all over,” said Joseph DiRenzo, a married 38-year-old father of three who left a hedge fund two years ago to enter commercial real estate.

DiRenzo says he’s feeling the hit in many places, especially in the value of his house on Long Island’s upscale Gold Coast in Muttontown, N.Y.

It can be had for $7 million – a good deal, he says, when you consider his next-door neighbor’s comparable home sold for $9 million last fall. He has cut the price twice in the 12 months it’s been on the market.

The DiRenzos aren’t unlike many American families cutting back to weather a downturn. They’re just richer.

To be sure, the poor and middle-class are being hurt more, but upper crust thriftiness could reverberate across the rest of the economy.

The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes account for nearly a quarter of all spending, according to data compiled by research firm Moody’s Economy.com from a 2006 federal survey.

Other government data show households in the top one-fifth of the U.S. population ranked by income earn about half of all total personal income before taxes – an imbalance that gives the wealthy immense economic clout, said Sara Johnson, an economist at the research firm Global Insight.

Unity Marketing, a Stevens, Pa.-based firm whose clients include retailers in the more than $322 billion U.S. luxury goods market, said its latest poll of affluent people nationwide found a 20 percent decline in spending on luxury goods in this year’s second quarter, and the lowest luxury consumer confidence level in the nearly five years the survey has been conducted.

Although the rich may be suffering somewhat, most have a far bigger financial cushion to ride out hard times than folks living paycheck to paycheck.

DiRenzo said that despite two price cuts to his home totaling $200,000, he doesn’t plan any more.

“The high-end buyers out there are maybe more selective now, but I’m willing to wait out the storm,” he said.

That hasn’t been an option for many Americans who have been swept up the maelstrom of foreclosures.