what RG is saying is that when a record is saved, ie written to disc (table) the event that is the beforeupdate event takes place. Indeed so does the afterupdate event, immediately after a successful update
note that a failed update will cause an error event
Now, there are a number of methods of making the save happen
eg
click a button with code as you are doing
but also
use records save from the menu options
just move to a new/different record
close the form
run code that just says if me.dirty then me.dirty =false
click the pencil in the record selector
etc etc
---------
now the purpose of the beforeupdate event handler is to let you do something BEFORE that save takes place - which is normally a validation test. if the validation fails then you can cencel the save, BY cancelling the beforeupdate - in which case you also get no afterupdate event
BUT the important thing is, even if you dont have an event handler, the event still takes place.
now how you manipulate your code is up to you ... but thats what happens. the difficulty (if thats what you are trying to do) is to force a user to save the record just by clicking a certain button - as he has so many other ways to try and save the record, accidentally or on purpose