At least as far as difficulty goes Atlus made two DLCs for those that would like to have a few levels in advance without putting too much gime grinding. S in the end, the ones that appreciate SMT as tough as they have been can have it, and the ones that came to the franchise with Persona 3 and 4 and don't want to get too frustrated can use this option.
I'm not going to lie, if there is a DLC that makes it possible to earn macca faster I'm going for it.
Probably for the veteran SMT player the amount of macca you get is alright as they generally have a better idea of what they want or need but as you're getting used to it being able to experiment makes the game a lot less frustrating.
If I take Strange Journey as an example, if you don't want to grind you may simply swtich demons for bosses and eventually figure out the ones you should use, but with so little money there's no way to do so without grinding forever or looking up for suggestions or a guide (well, at least for a SMT beginner, I believe)