Business owner Stephen McPartlin never was the type to carry a coffee card – the kind you dig out of your wallet to get punched for a free cup of coffee.

“Couldn’t be bothered pulling it out,” he said.

Lately, when he stops at 6 a.m. on his way to work to read the newspaper over a cup of house-blend and hazelnut, he remembers to get his card punched.

His changed behavior is one small sign of a much bigger shift in consumers’ outlooks after three grinding years of declining stock prices, a jobless recovery and now, war and a heightened terrorism threat.

Like a tight boot at the end of a long march, the economy’s post-bubble malaise is starting to chafe.

People with good-paying jobs who a year ago were spending cash they received when they refinanced their mortgages are now forgoing affordable luxuries.

Bob Cyphers, a consulting firm manager, has canceled his family’s premium cable television service. Ditto his prepaid car wash.

Consumers’ caution is showing up in the economic data.

Growth in household spending is expected to slow to about 2 percent in the first half of this year from 2.8 percent in the second half of last year. That’s less than half the 5 percent annual growth in the late 1990s, according to Macroeconomic Advisers of St. Louis.

The reason is plain. War and terrorism aside, income growth is slowing.

Real disposable personal income is expected to grow by 1.6 percent in the first quarter. That’s down more than a full percentage point from the fourth quarter’s 2.7 percent growth, according to Macroeconomic Advisers.

What puzzles some economists is why consumers didn’t reign in their spending earlier, given the huge hits many took to their personal wealth because of the stock market’s precipitous decline.

“This war,” McPartlin said, “is like a low-grade fever where everybody feels kind of sluggish, like they’ve got the flu.”

Will a decisive victory offer a cure? Economists are divided, but many predict the conflict will do little to jolt the economy back to life.

McPartlin, meanwhile, will carry his coffee card. “You use all the coupons you can.”