Personally, I would do the upgrades now because it sounds like they are necessary.
But I would cut corners where possible in the rest of the remodel.
Our house was built in 1947. We remodeled the kitchen when we moved in. We added a dishwasher. Due to the same issues with electrical (our circuit breaker almost maxed out), we hired someone to put in a new line for the dishwasher. We discussed upgrading the full electrical, but the electrician said unless we were adding a bunch more, we'd be fine for now.
For the rest of the kitchen though, it was DIY. So are you an engineer at heart, really? The kitchen is a galley style and had a sink and lower cabinets and upper cabinets on one side, and nothing on the other (no appliances either).
My husband built lower and upper cabinets for the other side to go around the newly-installed appliances. He pulled out the lower cabinets (which were too short to allow a dishwasher) and built new cabinets on the sink side. We reused the cabinet faces/ drawers that were here, and ordered new ones on-line and stained to match. He tiled the counters and installed a fan over the stove.
By "built new cabinets" I mean built them from scratch, not using pre-fab. He paid $8 for an adult ed class at the local HS which gave him access to the large tools.
All in all I'd say the remodel cost $1000-$2000 or so for the cabinets, a few hundred for the doors/faces, $1000 for the tile. The appliances were extra, but we tend to go reliable low-end (Hotpoint oven, Kenmore fridge and dishwasher). The whole thing was maybe $5k or $6k (this was in 2004-2007).
When you talk about redoing kitchens, if you are paying someone else, they can get really expensive really quickly.