Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of January 14, 2019

Possibly a dumb question, but how do you buy a total stock market index fund at Vanguard, for a Roth IRA? I opened my Roth IRA with them a week ago, and have $250 to contribute at the moment. So, not enough to buy VTSAX. I next tried to VTSMX, but it's apparently closed. So, I went for the only remaining similar fund I know left, VTI, which I recognize from my prior IRAs with Betterment.

But now I'm reading that you can't use a Roth IRA to contain VTI? It can only contain mutual funds, not ETFs -- is that true? And even if you can, since VTI is only bought at the share price, it's not a round number and so I wouldn't be able to perfectly max a $6,000 IRA with it.

How are you supposed to use Vanguard to buy simple index funds for a Roth IRA? I feel like it should NOT be this complicated. Contacting Vanguard has not helped at all.

/r/personalfinance Thread