Actually, your cables are too short. They stop at the brake bosses right now. They need to go all the way to the dropouts.
Cables are relatively inexpensive. The wheel issue is a whole 'nuther animal. You can find a set of Specialized Stout hub/Deore hub with x317 rims fairly cheap on eBay b/c Specialized spec'd this on a gob of bikes and people are wanting to change to at least an XT level.
Search on eBay for them. They have been pretty reasonable and for someone with a tight budget, they should be okay.