I just got back from a lunchtime financial workshop hosted by my company's retirement company. The workshop was designed specifically for young women, and was mostly too basic to be of any use. My table mates were awesome, though, and our conversations lead me to suspect there are a few closet mustachians here.
The first comment one woman made right after sitting down was that the best financial advice she could offer (to the two youngest ladies at our table) was to max out your pre-tax contributions. From their reactions, I suspect the ladies in question already DO max out their accounts, but didn't want to admit it to a table full of strangers.
One of our activities was to create a budget with 7ish assigned categories. One category was debt (and not mortgage or car debt; those were included elsewhere). No one at the table (including the recent graduates) thought debt was a reasonable budget line item and wondered why it was included. Their first guess at how much was reasonable to save was 25-30%. I'm guessing this also included a "I don't want to shock the other folks at the table, so I'll round down" factor.
The speaker had lots of "It's so hard to balance a budget these days" comments included to make it palatable to a mainstream audience, but my coworkers were having none of it: "If you can't afford the house, buy a smaller one!" "Why would you have credit card debt? Just live within your means!" "Don't eat out; cook in bulk and freeze meals for when you're feeling lazy!"
The best was an example of putting a $2,500 couch on a credit card and showing how much the couch costs after paying it off using the minimum. Everyone in the audience was dead set against buying it. ("Don't by the new couch, buy used!" "Buy with cash and get a discount" "Save up for it BEFORE you purchase it") The instructor kept having to repeat, "but let's pretend you NEED that new couch" to make her next point about paying it off quickly instead. I don't think the folks in the room would have bought the couch. :-)
Nice job, ladies!