Questions about Vanguard Dividends

[Die_Wealthy]

Hello yall!
I have a question about how Vanguard VTI pays dividends. I've had a vanguard account for about 3 years and never know when they pay dividends. It shows me that they do, I just never know how often, and where do they go. I believe I put it to reinvest, but does that mean it goes to my money mutual fund, or does it go straight to the index funds themselves? Being as my stash is growing, the dividends arent yet able to buy a a share of index funds, so I'm not sure how that would work.
Thank you for your time!

[bacchi]

Reinvested dividends will buy partial shares at Vanguard.

If you're not reinvesting dividends, your money market will be increasing. If you are reinvesting, your shares will be increasing every quarter; for example, if you started with 10 shares you might have 10.131 and then 10.568 and then 10.919, etc.

You can see the partial buys using the 'Activity' tab. This is a buy of the money market (I'm not reinvesting VTI because I'm RE).

12/31/2020   Reinvestment    bacchi — Brokerage Account — 103XXYYZZ   VANGUARD FEDERAL MONEY MARKET FUND (Settlement Fund)    −$0.21

[Die_Wealthy]

Reinvested dividends will buy partial shares at Vanguard.

If you're not reinvesting dividends, your money market will be increasing. If you are reinvesting, your shares will be increasing every quarter; for example, if you started with 10 shares you might have 10.131 and then 10.568 and then 10.919, etc.

You can see the partial buys using the 'Activity' tab. This is a buy of the money market (I'm not reinvesting VTI because I'm RE).

12/31/2020   Reinvestment    bacchi — Brokerage Account — 103XXYYZZ   VANGUARD FEDERAL MONEY MARKET FUND (Settlement Fund)    −$0.21

Perfect, thank you! Congrats on RE! Hope to join you!

[RWD]

The exact amount/date of each dividend can be seen on the distributions tab on the Vanguard site:
https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/distributions/vti

Pretty easy to get a sense of when to expect the next one from that.

[mies]

The news section on Vanguard's website will often have a post about upcoming distributions for the quarter too. It seems like they publish it at the last moment. You won't see any information on March dividends until early March.

[Die_Wealthy]

Thank you all for your responses and links. I understand it much better now and have chosen to have my funds reinvest right back into (partial) VTI shares instead of going to the mutual fund. I'm excited for March!