I think the purpose just lets them know what advice to give you. I ignore their advice. Just pick one and "Taxable". If you want to buy standard mutual funds, you'll use their normal account. If you want to buy ETFs (like VTI) you'll use a brokerage account. You can have multiple accounts. I don't have a brokerage account because I prefer standard mutual funds. You'll need $3k to open a standard mutual fund account with VTSMX, and can upgrade to VTSAX (non-taxable upgrade) when you hit $10k. VTI holds the same stocks as VTSMX and VTSAX.