By LAURA M. HOLSON

LAST YEAR, INVESTMENT bankers and their spouses kept their wallets shut during bonus season, first, out of panic, and later, fearing mobs with torches would descend upon their gated estates.

Now, after a year of self-imposed austerity and in what is shaping up as a spectacular bonus season, the Wall Street crowd is shaking off what one luxury retailer called its “frugal fatigue.” Unlike earlier spending sprees, however, the consumption will be a lot less conspicuous.

Morgan Stanley recently said it was setting aside $14.4 billion for salary and bonuses, or $235,000 per employee. A day later Goldman Sachs said it would pay an average of $498,000, with top producers at each of the two banks earning in the millions.

More than in past years, this year’s bonus numbers are stirring deep resentment in a nation staggering under 10 percent unemployment.

Yet there is another class of individuals, beside the fortunate few receiving Wall Street windfalls, who celebrate bonuses: purveyors of goods and services to the wealthy who stand to see their own fortunes improve. In the New York area’s own kind of trickledown, real estate agents, high-end car dealers and luxury retailers are all welcoming this bonus season as if it were their own.

In the Hamptons, east of New York, where real estate agents court bankers looking for summer homes, the sales are also expected to be a boon for contractors, movers and groundskeepers. “A community like the Hamptons depends on house trades,” said Diane Saatchi, an agent with Saunders and Associates who just sold a home to a banker for $4.9 million.

“Don’t ask to talk to him about it, because he won’t,” Ms. Saatchi said of the buyer, deflecting a reporter. “They don’t want anyone to know they are buying.” That includes the banker’s extended family, she explained, because he is worried they will ask him for money. No one, she said, “is bragging about anything.”

At the heart of Wall Streeters’ anticipated splurge is pent-up demand after a year dominated by fears of a new depression, retailers and cultural observers say. “For whatever reason, people feel the need to reward themselves for doing something good even if that just means surviving,” said Alexandra Lebenthal, an investment manager and creator of a fictional column about financial high jinks for NewYorkSocialDiary.com.

At the same time, investment bank ers want to avoid the wrath of a fed-up public that continues to blame them for America’s recessionary ills. On January 13, the chief executives of the nation’s four largest banks took a beating in hearings from United States Congressional leaders, who criticized their pay practices as being out of tune with the rest of the country. The Obama administration is channeling that populism with proposals to further regulate and tax banks.

As such, the prevailing wisdom on Wall Street is less show and no tell.

“Bankers are being told by their bosses to be careful,” said Janet Hanson, who was an executive at Goldman Sachs for 14 years and is a founding member of 85 Broads, a professional women’s networking organization. “I mean, how does it look if you got a $1 million bonus from Goldman Sachs and you are sporting around in a new Audi TT? People will hate you.”

Few Wall Street executives or their spouses contacted for this article were willing to discuss how they planned to spend or invest their bonuses, expressing a fear of public scorn combined with the silence about personal rewards that bankers usually observe.

One banker’s wife, who did not want to be named, said she and others like her felt more financially secure these days. “There is the sense in the community that the world is not coming to an end,” she said. Of bonus critics, she added, executives like her husband work hard and are unjustly singled out as greedy. “Everybody wants someone to blame,” she said, “and rich people are an easy target.”

She and her husband have earmarked his bonus for two purposes. First, they want to set aside enough money for their four children’s college funds. But they are also shopping for a vacation home - perhaps from a buyer forced to sell.

“It is a good time to buy,” she said. A friend of theirs, another financial executive, recently bought a house in Vermont weeks before it was to be foreclosed upon.

As much as Wall Street executives are seeking value, decisions are also based on whether they (and their new possessions) can hide in plain sight. A case in point: Manhattan Motorcars offered two lease programs in December, each costing about $100,000. The first was a one-year lease for a Rolls- Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe with embroidered headrests and a brushed steel hood. The second was a threeyear lease for a Bentley Flying Spur or GT convertible, both of which are more understated than the Rolls.

Brian Miller, the owner of Manhattan Motorcars, said the Bentleys were more popular with Wall Street executives, not because they were less expensive, but because they attracted less attention. “They said they wanted to tone down their exposure and get something more staid and sedate,” Mr. Miller said. “Later on they said they could come back and get something flashy.” Suzanne Johnson, the general manager of Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store, said many wealthy customers were suffering from what she called “frugal fatigue.” After a year of looking, they are ready to treat themselves.

“It is about inner self-gratification rather than letting people know how rich you are,” she said.

Spring is not far off - and that means more opportunities for financiers and their spouses to reward themselves: paintings bought at art auctions, summer homes and silken gowns to wear to the season’s gala parties. Will Wall Street restrain itself as it seeks to repair its damaged image?

“I think it will be interesting to see what big houses go up for sale or who buys the first big necklace,” Ms. Lebenthal said. “Even when there is still so much populist anger.”

TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The relatively understated Bentley Flying Spur has become popular with highly paid executives.