title: Method for Sorting a list of expense categories into specific categories
body: <p>I am new with SQL/Python.</p>
  
  <p>I was wondering if there is a way for me to sort or categorize expense items into three primary categories.</p>
  
  <p>That is I have a 56,000 row list with about 100+ different expense categories. They vary from things like Payroll, Credit Card Pmt, telephone, etc.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to put them into three categories, for the sake of analysis.</p>
  
  <p>I know I could do a GIANT IF statement in Excel, but that would be really time consuming, based on the fact that there are 100+ sub categories.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way to expedite the process with Python or even in Excel?</p>
  
  <p>Also, I don't know if this is material or not, but I am preparing this file to be uploaded to a SQL database.</p>