Here is yet another approach, which was more convenient in my case (I just wanted to drop root privileges and do the rest of my script from restricted user): you can make the script restart itself from correct user. Let's suppose it is run as root initially. Then it will look like this:
#!/bin/bash
if [ $UID -eq 0 ]; then
user=$1
dir=$2
shift 2 # if you need some other parameters
cd "$dir"
exec su "$user" "$0" -- "$@"
# nothing will be executed beyond that line,
# because exec replaces running process with the new one
fi
echo "This will be run from user $UID"
...