Academia is a horrible career path. It's insanely competitive, offers very little security, often requires major relocation and never pays particularly well. This is well known and if you do a bit of googling you'll find plenty of horror stories about how difficult it is and how you should run away and never look back. I recommend you read them and think carefully about whether this is really what you want to do with your life.

If it is, then it's actually not that bad, but you need to go in with your eyes open. I would advise doing academia until it becomes financially unfeasible to continue to do so (it's what I'm doing). If you can find someone to give you a scholarship and a stipend for a PhD - great! If not, then history becomes a hobby. After the PhD, if you find a job - great! If not, move on. Do not put yourself into the poorhouse in your 30s chasing an stupidly competitive low-paying entry level job.

As for other careers, there's plenty you can do with a history masters or doctorate outside of academia. If you want to do what you love still and swap one competitive and low-pay career for another slightly-less-competitive and equally-low-pay career, you can work in the heritage industry: museums, historical sites, outreach. Teaching is always an option, as others have mentioned, either at secondary level or CC level if you're in the US. There are also plenty of para-academic careers like publishing (historians tend to make good editors), libraries and archives, university admin or freelance writing (I know someone financing their PhD by ghostwriting technical manuals). And then there are the usual sellout corporate jobs that historians tend to do well in: civil service, diplomatic service, marketing and PR, consultancy, business admin and management, banking etc. They may be boring, but they'll pay the bills and usually have plenty of paid reddit time built in!

TL;DR: Go for it, but be prepared to parachute out if you need to.

I'm in a related field (Classics), and left the field a couple years ago. So if you want a cynical (but kind of positive in the end) assessment, read on. If you'd rather not read a cynic, stop reading here.

I'll keep this super brief. I loved the teaching. And loved the research that really excited me. Those were wonderful. And that's what excites you in grad school.

The reality is that you'll reserve that great research for publication in big, peer-reviewed journals. But most of the time you'll be conducting research for conference presentations, festschrifts, edited volumes, and lectures. You don't squander your best work on those, because they're rarely peer reviewed, and your audience is much smaller. So those are for your lesser ideas, things you had a good thought about, and areas tangential to your real loves. That kind of research takes up the bulk of your time. And add to that book reviews, article reviews, grant reviews, etc. The shit you love gets put on the back burner and you get to it when everything else is done.

Then add massive service requirements. Reams of paper to read and revise on rubrics and assessments, proposals for new majors/minors, official proposals for the faculty athletic council, etc. This also takes up tons of time.

Then add personal projects. These are great, but require endless grant writing, assembling a team, making arrangements for students, setting up room and board if travel is involved, etc. Again a massive time suck.

Then with what little time you have left over, you can prep your classes. The one thing that you really loved is the first one to get squeezed out in academic triage. Too many deadlines that must be met, too many things that are way overdue, but you can always fudge class because you know the material well enough. And that's a shitty feeling.

Before you know it, you're up late every night just keeping your head above water. When the weekend rolls around, your first thought is, 'Sweet! Now I can catch up on work!' Ditto with any break or holiday. And less than 1/4 of that energy is devoted to the teaching or personal research that you loved so much in grad school.

And if you're lucky enough to have friends outside of academia, you'll be regularly telling them that no, you can't meet up for happy hour on Wednesday because you have way too much to do for Thursday. And there's no way that you could lose an entire weekend going camping because you're already overdue on a conference proceedings submission, have 150 tests to grade, and there's a grant deadline on Tuesday. So they invite you less and less often. Until you stop hearing from them. They, by the way, are programmers, pharmacists, office managers, librarians, and administrators. And their day ends no later than 7, but usually by 5. And they're making more than you. While you're up until 2am on Wednesday night reading and commenting on a 150-page report on incorporating ethics discussions into first-year seminars.

So I got out. Most of what I was doing I hated. Those brief moments of happiness while being in class were too few and far between. I'm in academic administration now, and I'm much happier. The day ends at five. I have friends again. I can balance personal life and work. And I appreciate every single happy hour, on an outside deck, with a margarita, like it's the greatest moment of my life.

On the plus side, there is plenty you can do with a PhD. They're slowly starting to introduce this into graduate programs, where they actually train you to seek employment outside of academia, with just the skills you've acquired. There are a couple of very good websites, books and articles dedicated to the subject. This one and this one are my favorites.

All that being said, you've also gotta pursue what you love. I went through it and confirmed that it wasn't for me. I have several friends that have left academia. I also have several friends that were ABD and quit. They're generally a less happy bunch. Because when life gets them down, they wonder what could've been. They'll beat themselves up about not just finishing up. The 'what if' eats at them. Many are happy with that choice, but several will break it out whenever they drink with an old grad school colleague.

This is way too long. Anyway, there you go. One person's opinion.

I'm guessing you're in the US? If so, a Masters degree in history will allow you to teach at a community college level. That's what I plan on doing with my degree.

Also, I'm right there with you on choosing to major in something you love rather than something that will make you a lot of money. :)

Weird that I can answer this... sort of. My mom majored with a bachelor's degree in history. After a few years at the historical society she transitioned into working at the library. She's technically not a librarian, though, because that requires a master's degree. Good luck out there!

Getting a job in academia is difficult in every discipline. Especially for history, I would recommend adding on a double degree or second major in a different field to make yourself more unique than all the other history graduates (science, engineering, anthropology whatever takes your fancy). Choosing ancient language electives also helps, and any art drawing courses too (for technical drawings of artefacts in fieldwork). Keep chasing your dream, but make sure you have a plan B!

Is there anything else I can do with just a master's?

In addition to what the other posts have mentioned, many individuals with an MA in history or anthropology to wind up in the environmental field, either on the consultant or regulatory side of things. It's fairly common for environmental or engineering firms to have a cultural resource division that handles section 106 (NHPA) or section 404 (CWA) compliance.

In terms of academia, take anything your undergraduate advisor says with a grain of salt. Talk to graduate students in your department to get a feel of what the current job market is like.

Whatever path you choose, avoid black-and-white thinking. There are lots of academic positions that are crappy jobs in miserable work environments, while there are likely any number of alternative careers that are "so-so" (not necessarily something you hate).