Is the rules event "Before saving a user account" applied every time a user edits their account?
Before saving a user account will react before you make a change in the user account.

And After saving a new user account will react After you create the user account.

But if you have the 2 events once you create a new user account you will trigger first the Before saving a user account event and after the After saving a new user account event.

If you go to create or update a user account always you need to call the user_save() function. The difference is in the first param. See this question with an example:

Create a user programmatically and give they a role