Edit: I'm posting this because I really really hope you guys continue. This is one of the most entertaining things on this site, and I don't want to see you guys put off by the idea that you need to go in-depth and grind things out just to make basic progression. There are a few minor things you guys have overlooked, and with the benefit of feedback I think you can correct your mistakes and progress without making the game a chore rather than fun.
Stop wasting SP on regular enemies. You don't need to use magic all the time, obviously use it when it makes sense to do so, but if a physical attack does the same or similar damage then use that.
Stop neglecting your persona physical attacks. Sure, they cost HP, but HP is cheap outside boss battles whereas SP is a lot harder to regain.
Stop neglecting your debuff spells. Buff spells are less important at the moment, but decreasing the attack power and hit chance of a strong physical enemy WILL make that enemy much easier to manage, and decreasing it's defense means you kill it quicker. It's worth the turn to lower it's hit chance at the very least.
Strong enemies with no apparent weakness are often susceptible to confusion, fear and other status effects. A good example is those tigers with the ball and chain. Try using Chie's "skull cracker" on them (chance to inflict confusion). You'll find it works nearly every time and makes fighting them completely trivial.
Finally, fuse often. You DON'T have to be knowledgable of all the ins-and-outs of fusion to just progress, don't let that put you off. However you should be fusing off all the scrappy personas you pick up in dungeons into SOMETHING, unless you are trying to level it to learn a specific skill first. Your main character's stats are directly dependant on the persona he has equipped, so you should try to keep his personas close to his level, or he will fall behind the other characters. You won't catch up with the rest of the party just by levelling personas with battle xp alone.
Fusing personas also takes advantage of bonus xp from social links, which are wasted otherwise. This way you can have personas that are even higher level than your character, because they gain levels due to S.Links.
Again, you don't need to go too deep into it. Just go to the velvet room every once in a while and fuse out all your crappy picked up personas. You can even fuse the ones you create again if you choose. Just fuse something at least.
