Sum of values based on Adjacent Cell contents

[homer09001]

Basicaly i have a spreadsheet to monitor my expenditure each month, three columns: "Out", "In" and "What", the What Column is conditional formatted based on specific text with 3 different categories "Monthly Bill", "Necessity" and "Luxury", what i want to do it total each of these 3 categories but obvisouly each of the 3 categories have many different types of outgoing under them.

So my question is how can i calculate the total of each of the 3 categories, i did find this formulae on this forum:

=SUMIF(C1:C10,"Cinema",A1:A10)

but i don't know how i could modify to count more specific texts?

 

[barry houdini]

If you create 3 lists, one each for all possible types of monthly bills, necessities and luxuries......and then name those ranges using the category names you have in E4:E6, you can then use this formula in F4 copied to F6

=SUMPRODUCT(SUMIF(C:C,INDIRECT(E4),A:A))

 

[homer09001]

If you create 3 lists, one each for all possible types of monthly bills, necessities and luxuries......and then name those ranges using the category names you have in E4:E6, you can then use this formula in F4 copied to F6

=SUMPRODUCT(SUMIF(C:C,INDIRECT(E4),A:A))

Thanks works a charm, although is there any way i can have the lists on a separate sheet and have this formulae still work?