Jeepdude,there are many programs that do back ups and they are definitely a must. A free one to back up your contacts,sms,emails will be PIM back up, do a search around. A paid ones will be SPB back up ,Spb back up...Check them out and take advantage of the trials offered.
Note: if you are concerned about your contact now, an easy way to back up right there and then will be to copy a file called PIM from your TP and save it to your TP SD card. Once you reset you can just copy it back and that contains your contact. However in order to do that you must have either PHM editor (free) or Resco explorer (paid)..there are others of course.
To sum it up for you my man . For right now, you must have a back up program and a file editor.