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. It’s 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 cereal is normally $4.65, it’s on sale for $2.
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 coupons
Total paid = $14- $7 (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 to DH’s relatives, they sold like hot cakes!
Throughout the whole week, I spent about $50 out of pocket getting 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!
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 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.
We have been running to the hospital every evening to visit mother in law who had a knee replacement surgery on 01/07/09. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which gave her very severe pain. When medicine and other treatments are not helping her anymore, the doctor recommended knee replacement surgery, with the hope to relieve the pain that she has been experiencing and hopefully allow her to be more active.
She is in a lot of pain and very weak after the surgery. In a knee replacement surgery, the surgeon removes damaged cartilage and bone from the surface of the knee joint and replaces them with a man-made surface of metal and plastic. She will need a few months of physiotherapy sessions to help her to recover and to be able to walk normal again.
