Leahs Cafe

A Catalina deal is a promotion or marketing campaign run by certain manufacturers or stores to give rebate in terms of cash coupons for buying certain amount of specific products. What we have at the Jewel-Osco grocery store last two week was a “Buy $30, get back $15″ Catalina deal by Procter and Gamble, General Mills and Coca-cola.

The trick is, at Jewel Osco: the $30 total is based on normal shelf price, even though the item can be on sale for less than the shelf price. Combine with coupon use, you get really good deal, things for free or even making money by buying this items included in the deal!

Walgreen does the same kind of catalina deal every week, but Walgreen doesn’t allow you to use the Catalina coupons on the same item to get more catalina coupons (it’s called rolling the deal in couponing lingo). But, Jewel Osco not only allow you to roll the Catalina coupons, they also take the catalina coupons from Walgreen! So, I used some of the Walgreen coupons at Jewel Osco stores to buy groceries or roll them into more catalina coupons when they have a good deal.

The deal started last week and ends today, but we were busy with MIL in the hospital, so hadn’t have time to go to the store much. I was there on the first day of the sale and spent about $5 out of pocket and collected $50 worth of cash vouchers.

This kind of deal doesn’t happen too often, the last one they have was in Nov 2008. It’s a “Buy $30 and get back $15 in Catalina coupons”, then you can use the coupons to buy more stuffs and roll into more coupons.

A typical scenario: a box of Fiber One Honey Cluster cereal is normally $4.65 at Jewel Osco, it’s on sale for $2 a box.

When you buy 7 boxes of cereals 7x $4.65 = $32.55 (over the $30 threshold for getting back $15)

Sale price is 7 x $2 =$14

minus 7 x $1 manufacturer’s coupons

Total paid = $14- $7 (manufacturer’s coupons) = $7.

You pay $7.00 ( and $0.14 in tax) and get back $15, a net profit of $7.86.

Needless to say, I have been buying cereals to make money. :-)

We obviously won’t need so many boxes of cereals for two person, so we gave them away, donated them to the food pantry and women shelter. We even get tax relief for doing that!

The 8-roll bounty paper towels and Tide detergent are normally $14.99, they are on sale for $10 and $11.47 each. But I am able to get them for $1.50 and $3+ each with the coupons and Catalina deal. I offered them for $6 each to DH’s relatives and friends who know nuts about coupons, they sold like hot cakes!

Throughout the whole week, I spent about $50 out of pocket over 40 transactions for goods worth about $2000+. Kept some of them for own use and resold some of them to T’s relatives and friends, made a net profit of $200 in cash and still have $50 worth of Catalina coupons!

I could have done much better if I could drive to the store in the morning as the store often ran out of the money making items when T got off work. I still have tons of unused manufacturer’s coupons for cereal and P&G products. I need to get going with the driving license and get all geared up for the next Catalina deal coming up in about 2-3 months. :-)