Thank you for using layman's terms... I appreciate it!

I am trying to create a personal budget spreadsheet. I know there are plenty of free templates online, but I wanted to create something simple that fit my specific needs without all of the extra bells and whistles.

I want to keep track of all of my purchases. I have them all in a chronological, horizontal list. From left to right, I have the date, the amount of the transaction, and a description. I input the amount of the transaction in one of three columns: "cash," "checking," or "savings." At the top I have a formula to sum how much money was spent in each of those categories.

I also want to categorize each transaction as "food," "bills," "gas," etc. This is where I thought the colors would come in handy. Food purchases could be red cells, bills could be blue, etc. At the top, I would like to have another formula that can sum the amount from all of the red cells, whether they are from the "cash" or "checking" or "savings" category, so I can see how much was spent on food (and all of the other color categories).

I learned from reading other forums that previous versions of Excel just need a macro to create a new formula, but for whatever reason I can't do that in Excel 2008. Is there a way to create a new formula that can sum cells based on color? Or is there another, color-less solution?

Thanks.